Kansas officials are calling a massive computer outage that’s kept most of the state’s courts offline for two weeks a “security incident” and, while they had not provided an explanation, experts say it has all the hallmarks of a ransomware attack. The disruption has left attorneys unable to search online records and forced them to file motions the old fashioned way — on paper. Courts are limping along, although the growing piles of paper are a mess that will have to be sorted and scanned eventually. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation said only that it is “engaged” in examining the problems, along with “federal partners”. No ransomware group has come forward to claim credit for the prolonged outage, analysts say. But, they also say it is “highly unlikely” that this is anything but a ransomware attack.
Notably spared was Johnson County in the Kansas City area, the state’s most populous county. It operates its own computer systems and had not yet switched over to the state’s new online court system.
