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MI5 Laptop Stolen -- Along With Top-Secret Data
Tuscahoma writes "ZDNet has this story about an MI5 agent who lost a laptop containing sensitive information at Paddinton station. Does this sound like the plot of a bad spy movie (turns out that Julia Roberts picked up the laptop to return it, and now she's on the run for her life from enemy spies)?" This really does sound like a screenwriter's dream. I wonder if the machine's already been fenced, the hard drive wiped, and some Londoner is wondering at the "Property of M15. PLEASE return" in the BIOS.
Alleged:
The general battle plan for the gulf war was stored on a laptop computer that was stolen from an unattended car just before the air war started. See Colin Powell's _My American Journey_
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
I posted it three days ago because I knew I was going to do it tomorrow.
a similar incident happened in New Zealand during the Muldoon years, though more ludicrous.
A journalist who had pissed off Muldoon (our prime minister) was under survaliance by the SIS (think CIA/Keystone cops). The journo noticed the agent sitting on a park bench opposite his house, and when the agent left, he left his briefcase on the bench.
Naturally the journo looked at the contents of the brief case and wrote an articlce on the contents of SIS agents briefcases. The contents are:
1. Pencil (chewed)
2. Notebook containing record of journo's movements
3. A Pork pie
4. A copy of playboy (well thumbed).
The SIS *never* lived that one down. To this day there are jokes about the contents of SIS briefcases.
Okay, I need some help here folks. I got the laptop, and I have one of the files decrypted. But I'm little bit confused about what it all means. Here's a what I got so far.
#ifndef __css_descramble_h_
#define __css_descramble_h_
struct playkey {
int offset;
unsigned char key[5];
};
extern int css_decrypttitlekey(unsigned char *tkey, unsigned char *dkey, struct playkey **pkey);
extern void css_descramble(unsigned char *sec,unsigned char *key);
What is this?:-)
But only if they're British.
It never ceases to amaze me how incompetent the British have been, individually and as a nation, over the course of history. The first bit of recorded history we have of the British is them getting conquered by the Romans. The Romans were far more advanced than the British, yet somehow the British managed not to learn anything from their experience and slip back into the Dark Ages once the Romans left. They then got conquered by the French in 1066, and the conquerors evidently were none too bright either, because they let themselves assimilate.
Britain then spent most of its time involved in some minor intrigue or petty civil war or something of the like, until, blindly following the rest of Europe who had about a fifty year lead, it decided to make a totally inept attempt at gaining an empire. This was successful for a while, but what do they have now? That's right. Nothing. They lost it all. And this is not even mentioning the fact that they had to get bailed out of two world wars by an ex-colony. Or that while Shakespeare may have produced fine literature by British standards, he's not really anything special in the grand scheme of things. Or that certain members of this sorry culture who felt the need to create a series of movies (the Bond films) for the sole purpose of holding on to their last shreds of cultural self-esteem.
So, in short, yes, I wouldn't trust a British spy, or anyone from that sad little island, with ANYTHING without handcuffing it to the poor brute so that he wouldn't lose it.
...it was smeared with orange marmalade.
Only the decoys. Why?
(currently testing something about signatures here)
If you read the story in the Uk press you'll find that it was encrypted using the top-secret stuff that these guys use.
It's Elwood Blues who has the thing handcuffed to him. But it's not a laptop, it's his Briefcase Full Of Blues.
Hope this helps.
I travel constantly with my laptop, and I've been using Scramdisk to keep all of my sensitive data encrypted.
Heh, look at his tag line. You just replied to someone who is running JFK's campaign for President, this year. You might want to wander around propaganda for a while, come back, and then see if his post makes more sense :-)
As in, he was (hopefully!) just kidding...
This reminds me of the time King Klinton lost the Football that has all the launch codes at the NATO 50th meeting.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
This isn't the first time this has happened. During the Gulf war, something very similar occured.
Even more serious, several months ago Bono lost his laptop that had the lyrics for U2's next album. Fortunately, he got it back and all was well.
Look at it this way: they're not called 'portable' for nothing. It'll happen.
That's like asking why Microsoft has the Windows source code.
The real question is why the data wasn't removed, or why the agent was allowed to carry his/her laptop out of headquarters. Or here's another one:
Why didn't the laptop have an autodestruct?
There's no point in owning a laptop if you can't put work stuff on it!
Darn, don't real spies ever watch the movies? Everyone knows you carry your (documents/laptop/bomb) in one of those cool aluminum cases with the custom cut foam and you ALWAYS handcuff it to yourself. Stupid spies. :-)
Skippy
"False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent." - The Stainless Steel Rat
hmmm, seems that we all now insite one of those strange loops RAWilson is always talking about....
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
They are also the ones (indirectly) responsible for the term 'spam' beimg applied to junk email.
The next Distributed.net project is to crack the encryption on the files in the laptop. sponsoerd by the IRA of course.
Cliché: Trite of overused expression or idea.
The cliché he used may have been referring to an oxymoron, but that doesn't make it wrong to call it a cliché.
I read about this story a couple of days back, and was informed that the spy had the laptop stolen whilst queing for a ticket... he went to move and noticed that the laptop was no longer between his feet. :) only to get a bit worried...
He then looked around the station a bit desperatly (as one would
As for seeing people running through stations... I know that I wouldn't stop them and ask them what they were doing - more often than not, it's someone running for a train just about to leave.
As it is, I have had a laptop nicked on the train... ok, not exactly nicked, but I left my laptop on an underground train, noticed that I no longer had it about two seconds after the train had left, and therefore started shouting obscenities.
I had the train searched two stations later only to find out that some bastard had nicked it.
There's also the chance that the password is 'secret' or 'magic' though.
I can just see it now:
Scene: office.
RING RING.
"MI5, M's office."
"Moneypenny? This is James. I seem to have lost something."
"James, *really*!"
"Could you take a quick dash into M's office and see if there's a laptop somewhere?"
"Only if you get it from me when you take me to dinner."
"Yes, well.. that's all well and good now - but if it's not there, we might just have a tad of a problem. You see, it does hold a few fairly important documents, and I am sort of responsible for it, you know."
"Is that a yes?"
"I might have to dash off and save the world because of this. That would take prescidence, you know."
"I don't hear a yes in that sentence."
"It's a terribly nice world. I have saved it a few times before. Would be a terrible shame to see it destroyed now, you know."
"James."
"Nice lakes. Beautiful trees."
"JAMES."
"Appealing overpasses?"
"Yes or no."
Sigh. "Yes. Now would you please go look?"
Whatever you do... don't read this.
Retrieving IP address....now.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
"Good, Cheap, Fast, choose two..."
Around here in SF, the cabs are
Fast, Curtious, Cheap, Safe, choose two...
VANBO
Wasn't some spammer skewered by a certain slashdotter for posting some BS about "being one with the markets"? It's likely that he needed a way to get his get-rich-quick secrets onto slashdot, while still appearing to hate spam.
My point is, don't automatically jump to conclusions on this guy. Maybe he is a dunderhead, but a traitor? That's not quite our place to say.
Of course, we expect CSIS to make stupid mistakes. After all, they aren't a real intelligence agency anyways. All they ever do is whine "oh no, not more immigrants! Immigrants are bad! They're all terrorists!". The CSE (Communciations Security Establishment -- Canada's equivalent of the NSA) is more a spy agency than CSIS.
But MI5 is supposed to be full of a bunch of James Bond-like smart and handsome people, right?
Why was the M15 agent carrying sensitive material on a laptop? Even if it was encrypted, that doesn't sound like the most brilliant of ideas.
It was really just an MIS drone who lost a laptop. The 'top secret' info was the 2 gigs of g04t-pr0nZ he'd been downloading on his company's T3.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
....and behind the name of the programming language 'python' mighty kick ass language too.....
The spokeswoman said the computer's data was encrypted and confirmed that any information held on it would be very difficult to retrieve. She would not disclose what type of encryption was in place or how strong it is.
:)
Every byte was xored with 'A'.
It's called "The Peacekeeper." More information is available here at the Internet Movie Database.
--
DeCSS source code!
--
you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
i got it from someone else, though i don't remember their username. be jealous of someone else, not me :)
--
DeCSS source code!
--
you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
As the taxi was taking them home it just happened to be approaching the house of a suspected spy. So the top secret agent had the taxi pull up, the passengers spilled out onto the pavement of a quite well to do residential area, then proceeded to scream obscenities through the suspects letter box. Including the immortal line, 'Come on out you commie b*****d, I want to give you a good thrashing'.
Loosing a laptop seems a rather minor misdemeanour after that don't you think?
threadeds blog
Watch out for the MIBs!
threadeds blog
Certainly. A quick google search finds us these two existing references.
This from canadanews.about.com
and
another from www.indiatribune.com
who taught him that slick trick?
believing the big bang requires a certain amount of supernatural faith
if you had a laptop with extremely sensitive information, wouldnt you make sure it never left your sight? how does one lose a laptop like this?
also, i wonder if there is going to be a reward or something for it...
This dude knew exactly what Windoze is good for. My commendations for a shrewd hire, MI5! I almost feel bad about embarasing him.
Leave 1 million pounds sterling (in silver!) in the LSU quad fountian at 2AM, April 1st or I will disable this critical piece of software and erase it's entire history. No tricks!
I know this is just a pipedream, but it would be nice if whomever stole the laptop put the encrypted data on the net. Then we all could try cracking it, a la the RC5 project (I'm probably getting the name wrong. Correct me if I am.) It would be interesting to peer behind the curtains at the machinations of the British government.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
I sent it in two days ago...
I know its an old cliche:
" 'Government Intelligence' is a contradiction in terms. "
Terribly offtopic (thus I post as AC to protect my karma).
.sig. I knew I had heard that somewhere! (From Sneakers. I guess you'd have to see the movie to get it. Strange movie. Not like what I envision Hackers to be. Who was that lady? She was the perfect social engineer ;))
I just "got" your
Welcome to Slashdot. Please do not feed the trolls.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
We are Bringing them their Menus in Bavaria! In Bavaria, Where The Mountains Stick Out of the Ground!
----
Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Oh, and the /. "Funny" icon is the Monty Python foot.
----
Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
I can't beleive anyone at all would ever say "Monty Python Sucks Ass" - those four words just dont fit together.
----
Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Monty Python is a comedy troupe which was behind classics such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They also had a late sixties-early seveties tv show called Monty Python's Flying Circus. They are outragously funny but in an absurd way. There are transcripts of all the flying circus skits, and some of the movies at Stone Dead Productions They also have a lot of great information and facts about Monty Python. Monty Python is not to be confused with The Full Monty which is an entirely different thing aside from the fact they're both English and both have "Monty" in the title.
----
Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Because perhaps it would make them a higher profile person, and they more than likely don't need or want that.
An example would be "enemy" agents would just need to watch for people with briefcases chained to their hands, and they would then know that person is in posession on sensitive information, or at least something quite valuable.
Something you might find interesting. At my place of employment, we do some government contracts, and do have what we deem "secure labs" where Classified and even at times Top Secret data is stored. They have procedures for all electronic equipment (such as physically crushing tapes and hard drives for disposal), however a co-worker of my noted "You know what, I bet they don't zero out the RAM when it goes out of the lab.". Ingenius observation!
Don't you think that most government agents are pretty conspicuous anyways?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Yes, but he travels around with the president. That guarantees him to be guarded like a mofo...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
If I remember correctly, the briefcase contains the codes that are required for the launching of nuclear weapons. If a situation were to come up where nuclear weapons would have to be launched, the briefcase would be opened and the codes given to the launch sites.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I know that the US president has a guy follow him around with a briefcase handcuffed to himself. Supposedly this has to do with our nuclear weapons, but I don't think there has ever been an official statement about what's inside.
I once saw a movie like this too. I think it starred Dolf Lungren(i butchered the spelling there), the Russian from Rocky IV. Anyway he lost the briefcase, and had to save the world and chase down some terrorists in some midwestern missle silo. Wish I could remember the name of the movie.
Wigs
--"Only after you've lost everything are you free to do anything"
At this rate, the thief will be posting next: "I posted it three days ago because I knew I was going to do it tomorrow." Tomorrow never dies. James Bond will definitely be on the case.
Will I retire or break 10K?
No encryption is safe from a chop shop. They can just break the laptop open and sell the parts.
Will I retire or break 10K?
(Score:-1, Spam)
Will I retire or break 10K?
Slashdot goes tabloid?
The article says that the laptop contained "sensitive" data, but it makes no mention of the classification involved. Encryption does not imply a security classification; you'd expect (and hope) that agencies like MI5 encrypt all classified information (particularly if it's left around where any Artful Dodger can pinch it.)
Just the facts, Ma'am.
are you kidding, or do you really think this? I've never really watched any Monty Python related television shows, so I wouldn't know if he "sucked ass" or not.
don't you think that a laptop handcuffed to someone walking around would be a bit conspicuous?
...who like to make statements about things they know jack about. Actually, I think its an Imperial attempt at aligning with Mr.Gates to over through the US government and by extension the DOJ. I guess the settlements not going that well, poor Bill. Maybe he is making a deal with the C1A as well, eh!
...Free information for the taking. Damn what smart marketing people they have. I wonder if I can get the dope on the Queen's knickers? Ummmm, Elizabeth in a thong ;-)
Goldfinger: No Mr. Bond, I expect to break the encryption on this laptop one of your fellow agents left lying around.
-----------------------------
Do not provoke me to violence, for you could no more evade my wrath than you could your own shadow.
The "places that [are] supposed to do it" are all relatively safe from attack - they're underground or underwater. I doubt that it's possible to launch missiles by itself, because that would make it very dangerous if stolen. I'm willing to bet that if the codes have been compromised, there's a system to make them invalid..
Any truth to the rumor it was actually former CIA Director John Deutch working for MI5 as a consultant who lost the laptop?
_____________
Godwin is a Nazi.
My favorite part of the article was that quote.
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Somebody's got to say it...
Have they looked on eBay yet for it?
"the information was encrypted..."
Right, it was stored on the hard drive as a series of magnetic patterns representing
0's and 1's. They'll NEVER figure that out...
I heard this on the radio this morning in the UK... Apparently the MI5 are publisicising it in the hope they'll get the laptop back - they rekon their encryption is safe, and they have the resources to get the laptop back a hell of a lot quicker than your average commuter... It's must've been on at least one CCTV cam...
;)
Whoever stole that laptop - big brother is watching you....
--
Maybe by releasing that it the information is regarding the state of terrorist activities in Northern Ireland, many people will brush it off as less important because it doesn't really affect them. This is opposed to letting people speculate what information it could contain if they didn't release anything. Things like that lead to harmful rumors.
Wonder if they have a porn directory with naked pictures of Pierce Brosnan and an mp3 directory consisting of The Matrix soundtrack?
Probably not...
similar thing happened in Toronto a while ago. A CSIS agent (one of the Canadian spy organizations) left a briefcase in his car while attending a Maple Leafs game. The briefcase had a bunch of sensitive documents and was stolen when his car was broken into. ----- "her". not "his". (clarification lamb!)
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
If they didn't before, they will now.
I'm not sure this story is true, probably just an urban myth; I know because the story should have started an EX MI5 agent.Also I know with all the stuff about security drilled into their heads, they MUST be very security consious. I worked for US Military Intelligence (I know it's an oxymoron)and they were security nuts. Just your average GI (without any clearance) is required to lock their car doors or they can be charged for a security violation. I think they ought to check real close on this one.
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
No, that's MI6. MI5 is, rather appropriately, a counter-intelligence agency.
Many thanks for the link. I'm self-respecting enough, but must be inadequately paranoid, because I never knew there was such a thing. Has there ever been a /. story about this office? Seems like something of much interest to the community. It appears, from the little I skimmed of the directors testimony and press releases, that these guys are the ones in charge of scaring our rulers...errr...congresspeople out of their tiny wits about cybersecurity and crime.
e xchanges-to-catch-terrorists policy that the government actually favors. The cognitive dissonance must be thick as hell around there....
.sig is irrelevant"
They also have the unenviable task of promoting the govs proclaimed policy of favoring greater privacy and security on the net and executing the anti-encryption-we-must-have-access-to-all-cyber-
Brad Gregory
"Any concept reducible to a
"To be fair, I was left completely unsupervised." ~Anon
It is quite possible that the laptop was purposefully lost, and contains disinformation.
The press, then, would be an unwitting agent of the MI5 in validating the authenticity of would actually be a false intel sitrep fed to the enemies of the intelligence agency.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You should always ask yourself why something is news. 99%+ of fraud and security breaches are leaked by competitors.
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
Why did they admit it?
MI5 has a long history of keeping things like this quiet by just not mentioning them.
So, an MI5 agent told a newspaper it was stolen.
Even more stupid than losing it in the first place..
Dude, that's not even funny.
Next, please.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (
aka the "right-wing" bitch animal.
Democrat, my ass.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (
was the e-text edition of "Atlas Shrugged" and child pr0n.
No surprise there. The two are often found together.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (
If MI5 is anything like I bet they are as far as security goes, the drive controller has onboard encryption (so the drive isn't readable by any other machine), multiple passwords that change daily, and a virus set to go off if the compueter stays unconnected to the MI5 network for more than, say, 24 hours. It's just a geuss though.... Lubarsky's Rule of Cybernetic Entomology-- "There's always one more bug."
====
Crudely Drawn Games
This isn't the first time this has happened. During the Gulf war, something very similar occured.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Well, imagine an agent trying to go to, say, WC and do the usuall stuuf there - with laptop handcuffed to him. It'd be a bit inconvenient, no? Same with eating, buying tickets and many other regular activities...
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
With the M15 laptop stolen, how are we going to get our next Mozilla milestone? This will set back development immensely, and it's all the English government's fault. I bet Microsoft paid off the English government to have them lose it.
Wait...that's an I, not a 1...
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
We will never be able to come to a consensus on which 10% ISN'T crap.
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
Just to clarify things, the agency is called MI5, not M15 .. another agency is MI6.
--
IIRC, it's been said before that MI5 and MI6 spy on each other...
I think MI5 is domestic and MI6 is supposed to be international, but there is overlap.
--
IIRC, there is an encrypted ext2fs that you can use, where you supply the password when you mount or something..
I wonder if it was this, or some Win32 based encrypted filesystem.
--
Doug
We know the data is safe because they are using the Super Secure(tm) Windows NT 4.0 operating system. Oh yeah, it is also in its prime state for high security, being it not connected to a network and all.
There must be a joke in there somewhere to call this whole line of work the 'intelligence business' :-)
We're the guys who are always talking about how the NSA has such amazing technology and can decrypt things sooo much faster than we or distributed.net can come close to, aren't we?
--
linuxisgood:~$ man woman
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
A similar thing happened in Toronto a while ago. A CSIS agent (one of the Canadian spy organizations) left a briefcase in his car while attending a Maple Leafs game. The briefcase had a bunch of sensitive documents and was stolen when his car was broken into.
:)
Maybe Canada and the UK use the same training programs for their agents
Dana
The guy who had the laptop was an 'intelligence' officer/operative/whatever. (Not a particularly good one, I'm guessing.) He would have been PRETTY conspicuous with a pair of handcuffs connecting him to his luggage. It's probably a good idea to NOT handcuff yourself to things if you want to blend into the background and gather top-secret information on Ireland while typing it into your laptop...
...to make this scenerio more embarassing -- make the laptop
be a 'cute little pink iMac' laptop. >:D
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
In this age of unlimited interconnectivity, it's amazing what we consider "Old News" these days.
_________________________
Didnt this story break on Thursday?
Not sure if this is just stuff that I've seen in the movies or if it's true to life, but don't these people usually have the things handcuffed to them or something?
And if not... SHOULDN'T THEY?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It was Bear, Paddinton Bear
Your pain is funny
Yes, and these are the kind of morons that the government wants to give the key to every encryption system used within the UK.
Too bloody right they are !!!!!!
As well as the (*irony*) beautifully crafted RIP bill (*/irony), in their infinite wisdom, the UK government now are bringing in a new 'Terrorism Act' which redefines terrorism as being err.... anything that the Government want really. So swiping a lap-top some MI5 civil service type left unattended can get you 'Enemy of the State' status as well....... bit like being chased by the Keystone Cops, I suppose.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
I lost my watch on saturday in the men's locker room at the downtown YMCA, It had sensitive data on it, like the actual secret correct time as set by an atomic clock in a government institution somewhere in midwestern united states. I had it strapped to my wrist as so many have suggested is the best way to save it, but I fear it may have been sabotaged by enemy spies who I also note were eyeing me in the shower room.
I don't think this agent was a spy, but apparently this laptop contained information on the state of terrorist activity in N. Ireland. Since the data was important enough to be encrypted, the theft is a major concern.
Just a few years from now, a scenario like this will be unthinkable. Intel recently announced a new technology using fingerprints and tiny Smart Cards for user security with laptops. If terrorists are to make any use of a stolen computer, they'll have to steal the owner's digit as well.
I must say I don't really feel comfortable about all this new technology...
www.e.magazine.dk
Weren't some MI5 agents executed in WWII for selling secrets to the Nazis? It's likely that this agent needed away to get the secrets to the people who paid him off, while at the same time looking innocent.
It wasn't stolen, it was *sold*, people.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (
I know it seems harsh, but this is one reason I'd like to see a username blacklist feature available on Slashdot. The idea doesn't impress me, but it seems necessary now that stuff like this guy is showing up posting advertising spam with a Slashdot account.
Moderating is all well and good, but it won't always catch them before I read a thread. It seems much easier to provide a simple list that I can add 'impulsiveprofits' to, and never have to think about him again.
Look at his profile, he's posted 8 times this week, each one spam advertising.
Yes, and these are the kind of morons that the government wants to give the key to every encryption system used within the UK.
Yes, I know you're watching me...
Deleted
Both of the computers were recovered.
It was posted on Slashdot awhile back, and here is a link to the original story.
On a note to the story, what's going to happen to the MI5 agent? I'm assuming that he will be quietly discharged, and a few months down the road he'll disappear. (That usually happens to clumsy government agents. heh.)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
I've always assumed that they end up being bought and sold on the internet's own black market... you know... EBay.
I'm only half-joking. Think about it, you have an open market where people all over the world can legally bid on your merchandise, and no effort is ever made to verify that the product being sold is not stolen (though there is some insurance the the product actually exists). Once someone buys it from you it becomes a legal item again, as that person has their "reciept" from the EBay auction...
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
I suspect that unless he snuck the laptop out (bad spy!), either the data is not that sensitive, or the entire hard drive was encrypted (or both).
Though actually, I'll bet there are a lot of people who would like to get ahold of the encryption software or hardware (probably hardware), in order to reverse engineer it. Not neccesarily for any bad purposes, mind you, I supsect that people such as Ross Anderson or Lars Knudsen (a couple of cryptographers, for those not in the know) would love to get ahold of something like that and be able to say that they broke a cipher used by MI5.
Also, I doubt this guy is actually a spy of any sort: more likely a desk worker of some sort.
"On a note to the story, what's going to happen to the MI5 agent? I'm assuming that he will be quietly discharged, and a few months down the road he'll disappear. (That usually happens to clumsy government agents. heh.)"
:)
If you're fimiliar with the Dilbert Principle, this agent will be promoted to upper-management in no time at all.
Is publicizing the theft/loss the right thing to do in this situation? What could MI5 possibly gain by announcing to the entire world that one of its bumbling agents has lost a laptop containing "sensitive government information"? If nothing else, the information might make the person who found (or stole) the machine realize that he has something really valuable in his hands, and decide to fence the sensitive information to MI5 enemies, or demand a huge reward, or even hold it for ransom. The saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity," but I wonder if this might be an exception.
begin 644
I think this would make a good children's story:
A nice family finds the laptop in Paddington Station and decide to take it home and take care of it. It tends to get into little adventures and hilarity ensues.
One of my former roommates bought such a laptop, only to find out later it was stolen from the CEO of a certain major corporation. He found out after looking at the hard drive, which not only had Windows 95 installed on it, but lots of files relating to executive business of said corporation.
The bizarre part is apparently no one at the computer store ever looked at what, besides Windows 95 itself, was actually installed on the thing, nor did anybody try to format the disk.
I don't think they ever caught the thief.....so some details have been obscured.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I had a laptop stoling a couple years ago and was just wondering what typically happens to them? Do the thieves sell them as is or do they wipe the HD, install a fresh Win9x (or maybe the latest OpenBSD :)) and then take them to the swap meet? My laptop was a WinNT 4 Server used for demoing web apps, and I doubt the average thug would know what to do when he couldn't just hit ESC to bypass the password prompt. Maybe such systems just wind up in the trash? Are there actually big time laptop-thieving operations or do people just steal them because they can't afford to buy one capable of running Win2K? My apologies for the lack of facts and plethora of questions.