By Jimmy Jenkins, Jamie Tarabay, Bloomberg News

Recent cyberattacks on public defenders’ offices in multiple Western U.S. states have spotlighted the technological vulnerabilities of an often overlooked but critical part of the U.S. judicial system.

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Public defenders, who represent clients unable to pay for their own lawyers in cases as serious as murder, are a staple of American justice. Many of the offices, which are scattered across the country, house decades of digital client records at any given moment.

Cyberattacks on public defender offices in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have impacted thousands of case files, in some cases sabotaging those offices’ ability to defend their clients in a timely manner.

There’s no indication the separate episodes were part of a

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