Latest Update: WA State Courts Odyssey System Outage Status

KEY ISSUES

• Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts Odyssey system is still spotty
• The WAAOC Security team is still conducting investigations into the outage
• WAAOC has confirmed that there was no ransomeware attack due to the quick isolation
• Still minimizing disruptions by withholding certain courts and Blake Refund Bureau, Appellate Court Document Portal, and e-filing.

Current State of the WAAOC

The Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts (WAAOC) still down going on three weeks. Their office has come under extreme scrutiny due to this incident. While court systems are coming back online the resources are still spotty. Only providing certain coverage in select court systems to minimize risk moving forward. The team concluded that ransomeware attacks were not initiated due to the quick response of the courts. Isolating the court system and shutting down access was a key component in security of the system. The following statement has been issued by the WAAOC on its public facing Facebook page (WAAOC).

“Washington Courts Network Status Update (Nov 18): The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is in the process of bringing up systems on the Washington Courts network, following successful work and testing throughout the weekend.

While forensic analysis is ongoing, according to security experts, AOC has taken all steps necessary at this time to secure systems and the unauthorized activity that was detected has been eliminated.

We can confirm that there was no detected breach of data and the event did not result in ransomware, due to quick action taken to isolate and secure the network. A post-event release will follow the next meeting of the state’s Judicial Information System Committee in December as we learn more.

As we continue to bring up the system, it is anticipated that there will be intermittent disruptions as the network and its applications are highly interconnected and operating in a new technical environment.

To help minimize disruptions, the Blake Refund Bureau, the Appellate Court Document Portal and e-filing for appellate courts will continue to be offline until the network is stable.

We appreciate the public’s continued patience as we work towards providing full restoration and functionality.”

With this statement courts are still down in select areas. With no certain quote on when service will be restored. This also comes on the heels of building lawsuits from disgruntled organizations. Some organizations include the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Sport Shooting Foundation (NSSF). All organization urged the courts to complete the restoration in a timely manner. Again, this issue was resulting in a long backlog of gun applications from the Washington State Patrol office. T

he State Patrol office is the single entity in charge of background checks. Organizations were claiming instead of depending on the WAAOC, the State Patrol should be using the National Instant Criminal Background System (NICS). This system is funded and facilitated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

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