Cyberattack shuts down Colorado public defender’s office

A cyberattack on the Office of Colorado State Public Defender has forced the office to shut down its computer network, locking public defenders across the state out of critical work systems.

Colorado public defenders do not have access to their work computers, are unable to access court dockets or court filings and can’t do any significant work for clients in court, according to internal emails reviewed by The Denver Post.

Office spokesman James Karbach confirmed the breach in a statement Monday, saying officials “recently became aware that some data within our computer system was encrypted by malware.”

Karbach did not say how long the public defender’s office expects to be shut down or when the attack happened, but emails sent to public defenders indicate the statewide office is effectively “non-operational” and the outage could last as long as a week.