Full Recap of the Washington State AOC Odyssey Outage

KEY ISSUES

• Washington Administrative Office of the Courts system down for two weeks
• Alleged cyberattack involving ransomware through ‘unauthorized activity’
• Involving outside counsel to investigate the security breach

Initial Outage and Why?

CourtTrax is a Washington-based company that relies on access to the Washington Court’s Odyssey on-line system to provide its customers with court records search and retrieve services. Court records research is ‘Mission Critical’ to our customers’ core businesses. The court outage during the first two weeks in November of this year impacted 1,000 + CourtTrax customers as well as many other businesses across the country. Thousands of businesses that rely on court research were unable to conduct research, and in many cases unable to conduct business. The outage reached a point where several organizations threatened litigation if the problem was not solved in a timely manner.

Initially, and through the outage duration, the AOC provided no substantive explanation as to the cause of the outage, nor when service would be restored (WAAOC).

The outage began on Sunday November 3^rd around noon.  Service was restored on November 18^th.  On November 25^th the AOC posted additional outage information on its FaceBook page.  The AOC wrote:

‘..The WA Administrative Office Courts (AOC) network took immediate action to secure the server after what was called “unauthorized activity.” The AOC was alerted of the attack originally on October 29^th, 2024, by a user of the system. A virus was also detected by the court’s primary software that could be potentially threatening.

Decision agreed upon by both authorities

The Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts made the decision, after conversing with the Chair of Judicial Information, to shut down the entire system. This action was taken on November 1^st, to isolate the network. A leading cyber security organization was tapped to investigate the issue. The AOC states that the two-week outage was essential for containment, and for a systems rebuild in a better environment with stronger security measures.

JIS applications were back up and running by November 18^th, and available for use. It was confirmed that the issue came from a specific site, unrelated to Washington State or any courts. AOC is claiming that their fast actions had prevented a potential ransomware or data attack. Confirming that all information held within the system was unchanged during this process.

The Administrative Office of the Courts will continue monitor all services through the end of 2024. ‘

This outage was a brutal wake up call to all our us who depend on current, accurate court records for out business processes. Hopefully, the AOC was and is able to fortify its operations to efficiently operate in today’s often hostile virtual environment.

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