LA Superior Court victim of ransomware attack, not thought related to CrowdStrike outage

CrowdStrike outage: LAX, hospitals, more affected

A software update from CrowdStrike shut down much of the internet, affecting Los Angeles International Airport, local hospitals, courts and more.

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County Superior Court system late Friday revealed it was the victim of a ransomware attack and has disabled its network computer systems to limit further harm.

The attack is believed to be unrelated to the CrowdStrike issue that created havoc on computer systems worldwide, a court statement said.

In a statement issued Friday night, the Superior Court system said its Court Technology Services Division had identified "a serious security event in the Court's internal systems which has now been determined to be a ransomware attack. The attack began in the early morning hours of Friday, July 19."

The statement went on to say that, immediately upon discovery of the attack, "the Court disabled its network systems to mitigate further harm" and that "the Court's network systems will remain disabled at least through the weekend to enable the Court to further remediate the issue."

In addition, the statement said the court is receiving support from the Governor's Office of Emergency Services as well as local, state and federal law enforcement agencies "to investigate the breach and mitigate its impacts."

Thus far, the statement said, "the preliminary investigation shows no evidence of court user's data being compromised."

Officials did not specify which "network systems" had been disabled. However, as of Friday evening, multiple pages on the court's website weren't working and returned error messages, including the jury portal, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, remediation and recovery, the Court will not comment further until additional information is available for public release, the statement said.

The statement credited the court's heavy investment on cybersecurity operations, modernizing its cybersecurity infrastructure and increasing staffing in the Court Technology Services Division's Cybersecurity Division to be able to quickly detect the intrusion and address it immediately.

Los Angeles County Technology Crime and Public Safety