Group claims security flaw in federal courts’ online filing system

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http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/02/pacer-public-access-court-security-flaw-free-law-project-235234

>The federal courts’ system for electronic filing and access to case dockets contains a serious security flaw that could be exploited by hackers, according to a group devoted to making judicial records available for free on the internet.

>The Free Law Project disclosed the existence of the security issue publicly in a blog post Monday afternoon but did not provide details about the problem with the online Public Access to Court Electronic Records/Electronic Court Filing system, better known to lawyers, journalists and court personnel as PACER/ECF.

>“We run a service that helps academics and journalists gather content from PACER,” the project’s Michael Lissner said in a statement Tuesday. “As part of this work, we discovered a major vulnerability that we reported directly to the Administrative Office of the Courts. We hope they’ll urgently provide a fix for this issue so that PACER/ECF can be a secure tool for its many users.”

>Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts spokesman Charles Hall declined to comment Tuesday on the reported flaw. “As a matter of practice, we don’t comment on alleged or potential IT security threats,” he told POLITICO.

>Different federal courts operate different versions of the PACER/ECF software. It was not immediately clear if the issue flagged by the Free Law Project afflicts all the extant versions.
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