PHOENIX — The state court system was the target of a cyberattack by criminal hackers or bots, according to a spokesperson for the Arizona Supreme Court.
Court IT staff discovered the attacks and tried to stop them as quickly as possible.
On Monday afternoon, Arizona Chief Justice Timmer told ABC15 in a one-on-one interview that she believes as many as 170,000 people were impacted.
“As soon as I learned about this outrageous criminal attack on Arizona’s Courts, I immediately called our team together to formulate a response,” said Chief Justice Timmer.
"I personally spoke with the top-ranking FBI leader in the state, and I pledged our full commitment to supporting their investigation and minimizing the likelihood that the information will be used to further jeopardize Arizonans,” she added.
Court leaders believe the hackers copied the personally identifiable information of many Arizona residents.
The Supreme Court's Administrative Office of the Courts is in the process of alerting those whose information was compromised.
"The good news, if there's any good news, is that these were mostly from backup systems," said Chief Justice Timmer. "Which I'm no tech person, but I'm told that means that it was stored in a some type of compressed format that makes it very difficult to read."
Based on everything known so far, the State Supreme Court's website said none of the data included information on jurors, witnesses, or court employees.
Chief Justice Timmer apologized during her interview when asked what her message was to Arizonans who might be upset by this development.
"The courts are there for for a number of reasons, including the protection of people, and you should be able to trust that it that information is secure," said Chief Justice Timmer.
"It's outright, outrageous, angering to me personally that this has gotten out," she said.
In the future officials will have to look at their training and systems in place to see if they can ensure better protection in the future, according to Chief Justice Timmer.
"We had this shut off after two two hours, for example. Could we have an automatic shut off sooner? Could we encrypt things? Should we be having all of all of this information, or get or get rid of some of it sooner, and just delete it so there's not so much out there? Things like that, and then we'll have to double down on our training," said Chief Justice Timmer.
In an email update sent late Monday night, officials said a second set of data was copied during the cyberattack.
The State Supreme Court said that second set included more than 150,000 Arizona Foster Care Review Board (FCRB) Recommendation Reports for current and past cases, dating back about 16 years.
"Although confidential, the copied reports contain case-specific information already shared with case participants, including parents, through normal FCRB processes," said the court's communications director Alberto Rodriguez.
ABC15 was told the cyberattack would not affect active dependency cases.
"Notifications have been sent to the Arizona Department of Child Safety, attorneys (including Arizona public defenders) who represent parents and children in dependency cases, juvenile presiding judges, and members of the Foster Care Review Board," said the emailed update.
Officials say AZPoint was not compromised, and the courts said it continues to be a safe platform to use.
Find the latest information from the Arizona courts on this incident by clicking here.
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