The Administrative Office of the US Courts announced that a cyberattack targeting contractor BAE Systems has disabled the notification platform used by federal bankruptcy courts across the country.

In a Thursday statement the office explained that the incident also stopped the creation and delivery of required bankruptcy notices to creditors and other parties.

"The Administrative Office of the US Courts has been in communication with the impacted courts and is also coordinating with BAE Systems. BAE is actively investigating this incident and working to restore operations," the statement said.

"As a result of the incident all access to the BNC systems and websites that BAE operates on behalf of the Judiciary and the related bankruptcy noticing process are unavailable at this time including bnc.uscourts.gov bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov notices.uscourts.gov and the National Creditor Registration Service."

BAE Systems is Europe's largest defense contractor designing and manufacturing military technology for the UK and US defense departments and a major provider of enterprise IT cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity services to military intelligence and civilian government agencies worldwide.

Spokespersons for US Courts and BAE Systems were not immediately available for comment when contacted earlier today for additional details on the attack.

The US Federal Judiciary the independent judicial branch of the US federal government also said last year that it was strengthening cybersecurity defenses after a cyberattack impacted its electronic case management systems.

The federal Judiciary added that while most documents in the system are public it now protects certain sealed filings containing sensitive information with stricter access controls designed to block attackers.

"The federal Judiciary is taking additional steps to strengthen protections for sensitive case documents in response to recent escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature on its case management system" it said.

While the agency stopped short of confirming a breach of confidential documents a Politico report said at the time that hackers had breached CM/ECF electronic case management systems and the PACER federal court document management platform gaining access to sensitive data including the identities of confidential informants.