<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <docID>341214</docID> <postdate>2025-03-27 12:21:08</postdate> <headline>Crime victims left in dark after court file data breach</headline> <body><p><img class=" wp-image-341215" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/20130916000790657056-original-1-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="1075" height="715" /></p> <caption>It's believed more than 9000 files have been accessed in a NSW court system data breach. (Dan Peled/AAP PHOTOS)</caption> <p class="wire-column__preview__author"><span class="kicker-line">By <b>Luke Costin</b> in Sydney</span></p> <p><strong>Victims of crime will have to wait a week to find out if a breach of Australia's largest online court filing system compromised their sensitive details.</strong></p> <p>NSW JusticeLink allows lawyers, police and businesses to upload sworn statements, identity information and other court files for the 400,000-plus cases filed each year.</p> <p>Justice department officials recently noticed unusual data changes and saw one account had accessed or downloaded more than 9000 files.</p> <p>Access was soon cut off and police were notified of the breach on Tuesday.</p> <p>Inquiries into the user's identity, what files were accessed and whether the account was compromised were all ongoing, investigators said on Thursday.</p> <p>"Cyber criminals routinely gain access to other people's credentials and accounts to gain access to systems," Cybercrime Squad commander Jason Smith said.</p> <p>"At this point in time, we just simply don't know (how it happened)</p> <p>"It's very early in the investigation."</p> <p>Detective Chief Inspector Smith would not speculate on whether domestic violence victims and other vulnerable people involved in the court system were caught up in the breach.</p> <p>But he suggested people take precautions.</p> <p>"If you have concerns about your safety as a result of this data breach, you should contact your local police station," he said.</p> <p>"Additionally, if you believe that your identity documents have been compromised as a result of any data breach, you can reach out to ID Support NSW, who will (assist) in remediating your identity documents."</p> <p>Attorney-General Michael Daley said the apparent intrusion was noticed during routine work by departmental IT experts and quickly stopped.</p> <p>He cited a police briefing as he warned it would likely take a week before investigators knew "exactly what has happened with those files and the exact nature of the data that was viewed by the hacker".</p> <p>"The important thing is the government's taking this seriously, because this is a system that stores public data securely," Mr Daley said.</p> <p>A system patch to prevent similar incidents was pushed through on Wednesday night.</p> <p>The breach comes after 3.8 million documents held on government portal Service NSW were illegally accessed in 2020.</p> <p>That hack, affecting up to 186,000 people, involved 47 staff email accounts without multi-factor authentication being compromised through phishing attacks.</p> <p>Australian Parliament House networks were breached by a malicious state actor, likely China, in another sophisticated phishing attack in 2019.</p> </body>