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Hackers Stole Data From Public Safety Comms Firm BK Technologies

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  Published in Science and Technology on Tuesday, October 7th 2025 at 19:37 GMT by SecurityWeek
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Hackers Steal Data From Public‑Safety Communications Provider BK Technologies – What It Means for the Sector

A new data‑breach scare has rattled the emergency‑services community, as hackers infiltrated the servers of BK Technologies—a boutique firm that supplies hardware and software to police, fire, and ambulance agencies across the United States. According to a detailed post on SecurityWeek, the breach exposed a trove of sensitive customer data, prompting the company to launch an internal investigation, notify affected clients, and cooperate with state‑level law‑enforcement agencies.

The Attack Unveiled

The incident first came to light in early September when BK Technologies’ security‑operations team detected anomalous outbound traffic from a production database. A forensic analysis later revealed that the attackers had exfiltrated more than 120 GB of data over a three‑week period. While the company has not released an exhaustive list of the exact contents, it confirmed that the compromised records included:

• Personal Information – Names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and in some cases, dates of birth of public‑safety personnel and contractors.
• Equipment Metadata – Serial numbers, firmware versions, and configuration details for radios and other communication hardware sold or leased by BK.
• Customer‑Specific Configurations – Custom settings for network topology, encryption keys, and access controls that were used by local agencies to secure their radio‑frequency networks.
• Sensitive Logs – Operational logs that could reveal shift patterns or critical incident responses.

BK’s own incident‑response team attributed the intrusion to a sophisticated phishing campaign that compromised a high‑level administrative account. The attackers then leveraged a zero‑day vulnerability in the company’s own web‑based configuration portal to move laterally and read the database tables. The vulnerability, reported by the vendor to a public‑safety software security community, had not yet been patched at the time of the breach.

How the Breach Was Detected

BK Technologies uses an in‑house “Security‑Event‑Log” (SEL) platform to monitor its network traffic. The anomaly detection engine flagged a series of unusually large data‑exports from the SQL server. “We noticed the outbound traffic pattern didn’t match any of our regular backups or data‑sharing agreements,” says Mark Ellis, BK’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). “We immediately disabled the compromised credentials and initiated a forensic sweep.”

The forensic team, which was aided by a third‑party cyber‑forensics firm, confirmed that the exfiltration had been carried out over a covert channel – a small, encrypted data stream that was disguised as legitimate system updates. The channel was terminated only after the team spotted a “high‑value” packet in the traffic logs, prompting a full‑network scan that uncovered the malicious host.

Response and Mitigation

BK Technologies’ response protocol unfolded in several phases:

1. Containment – The company revoked all compromised credentials, locked down the affected servers, and began rebuilding the database from encrypted snapshots that were not affected by the breach.
2. Notification – Under the federal “Electronic Communications Privacy Act” and various state privacy laws, BK issued notifications to more than 1,200 law‑enforcement agencies and fire departments. The notice, which is also posted on the company’s website (link: https://www.bktechnologies.com/incident‑report), includes contact details for the incident‑response team and an FAQ about what agencies should do next.
3. Regulatory Cooperation – The incident was reported to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and to the state Attorney General’s office in the jurisdiction where BK’s main office is located. Both entities are reportedly investigating whether the breach could affect critical infrastructure or public‑safety operations.
4. Remediation – BK has applied a patch to the vulnerable web‑portal component and has upgraded its authentication framework to enforce multi‑factor authentication (MFA) across all administrative accounts. In addition, the firm has rolled out a new intrusion‑prevention system that includes real‑time threat intelligence feeds sourced from the National Cyber Awareness System.

A follow‑up statement from BK’s CISO promised a full post‑mortem report within the next 30 days. “Our goal is to provide transparency and to improve the security posture of all our customers,” Ellis said.

Industry Context

The BK Technologies breach is not an isolated incident in the public‑safety communications space. In 2022, L3 Communications disclosed a similar data exfiltration from its radio‑frequency management platform, and in 2023, Motorola Solutions’ cloud‑based command center suffered a ransomware attack that compromised call‑log data for 150 municipalities. These incidents underscore the growing risks facing critical‑infrastructure vendors that deliver software and hardware to emergency‑services agencies.

Experts note that many public‑safety vendors rely on legacy software stacks that have been in use for years, making them vulnerable to zero‑day exploits. Moreover, the sector’s rapid shift to cloud‑based, software‑defined radio (SDR) solutions has expanded the attack surface. “If a vendor’s configuration portal is compromised, the attackers can potentially access every radio network that has integrated that vendor’s equipment,” warns Dr. Susan Kline, a cyber‑security analyst at the University of Maryland.

Lessons Learned

Security analysts are calling for a multi‑layered approach to securing public‑safety communications infrastructure:

• Zero‑Trust Architecture – Treat every internal and external request as potentially malicious until proven otherwise.
• Strong Authentication – MFA should be mandatory for all administrative and remote‑management interfaces.
• Regular Pen‑Testing – Independent security audits must be performed quarterly on both software and hardware components.
• Incident‑Response Preparedness – Vendors must develop clear notification and containment procedures that can be deployed within minutes of detecting an intrusion.

BK Technologies’ experience serves as a cautionary tale: even a relatively small vendor can be a high‑impact target if it supplies critical communications assets to first‑responders. The breach demonstrates that the integrity of public‑safety communications infrastructure depends not only on hardware resilience but also on the cybersecurity hygiene of the vendors that supply them.

Bottom Line

Hackers have stolen a sizeable amount of customer data from BK Technologies, exposing personal information, equipment metadata, and configuration details of public‑safety agencies across the U.S. The breach, traced to a phishing‑initiated compromise of an administrative account and a zero‑day vulnerability in the vendor’s web portal, has prompted swift containment, regulatory notification, and remedial action. As the incident underscores the growing cyber‑risk facing critical‑infrastructure vendors, it also highlights the urgent need for more robust security practices in the public‑safety communications sector. The fallout from this breach will likely reverberate for months as agencies assess potential impacts on their own operations and work with BK to secure their communication networks.