Anchorage police shut down certain servers and cut off vendor access after learning a third-party service provider involved in a planned software upgrade was targeted in a cyberattack, officials said.
The Anchorage Police Department said it was notified Jan. 7 and took precautionary steps while the third-party provider leads the investigation. APD said it has found no evidence its systems were compromised or that department data was acquired by a threat actor.
Municipal IT shut down the relevant APD servers, disabled the vendor and all third-party service provider access, and oversaw the deletion and removal of remaining APD data from the third-party provider’s servers, the department said. APD said it also alerted employees to watch for suspicious activity.
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Anchorage Daily News reported APD spokesperson Gina Romero identified the vendor involved in the upgrade work as Utah-based White Box Technologies Inc. Romero referred further questions about the investigation to White Box, the newspaper reported. A White Box representative referred a reporter to the company’s legal counsel, who was not immediately available for comment, according to the report.
White Box says it provides database conversion and integration services and works with public-safety clients, among other industries.
APD is Alaska’s largest police agency and serves Anchorage, the state’s largest city.
In 2021, APD disclosed that unredacted traffic collision reports had been inadvertently published for nearly two years because of a records-system malfunction, exposing birth dates and driver’s license numbers for 11,402 people, according to Alaska Public Media.
