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Missing Hard Drive Spurs Data-Theft Fears In Canada

Posted by timothy on from the get-your-new-ehdentity dept.

DevNull writes "A government of Saskatchewan (Canada) hard drive has gone missing, and it contains significant personal data - in fact, the government won't even detail what all is contained in it. Read about it from the CBC. So much for people who think the internet is the cause of all their security fears! Identity theft is the major concern at the moment." B5_geek links to this report on Bloomberg.com which says that "'[t]he information includes names, addresses, beneficiaries, social insurance numbers, pension values, pre-authorized checking information and mothers' maiden names," according to Co-operators Chief Executive Kathy Bardswick

6 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. If found, send to... by misfit13b · · Score: 4, Funny
    ...oh, forget it, you already have the address.

    ;^)

  2. Re:Ugh by Smokey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Security, security, security, people

    And let's not forget PHYSICAL security, somebody had to go in, remove the hard drive from the computer (I assume it was in active use..) and walk out with it.

  3. The Co-Operators by Hadean · · Score: 4, Informative

    The drive contained a list of members, the information above and credit card numbers of members of the Co-Operators Life insurance company.

    Check out this article (Regina Leader Post).

    (OT: Have you noticed that there are more and more threads on Slashdot that has less then 10 comments? Hmmm...)

  4. This company is an IBM subsidiary by dl248 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a case where the work has been farmed out to ISM, which is a subsidiary of IBM. It's not the government's fault, but ISM/IBM who are to blame here.

    The amount and detail of data makes this a SCARY situation.

  5. so? by 3-State+Bit · · Score: 4, Funny

    It was encrypted, right?

    I mean, these days any schmo with an iBook goes /Applications/Utilities/Disk Copy, clicks File | New | Blank Image and chooses a name for the file, the desktop for its location, and AES 128 for encryption (recommended).

    Then just unmount the drive image (drag it in the finder from your desktop to the trash -- which will turn into an eject button) before you leave your computer for the day, or whenever somebody's using it who shouldn't have access to the contents of that drive -- even if they're using your account, cuz' you're letting them sit at your computer.

    Double-clicking the drive image prompts for a password (don't check 'save to keyring') before mounting it and once more you're good to go.

    You don't even ever have to turn your computer off.

    Um, yeah. (Eyes dart around the room looking for a way not to receive a bunch of off-topic downmods. Um....)

    Wait! Got it!

    "You know, this wouldn't happen if hard-drives were encrypted by default, and the OS needed a password from the HARDWARE (or a hash) such that on bootup if your configuration is different radically from what it was before, your valuable information becomes unreachable.

    Oh wait, XP does this already.."

  6. More Info: by Nos. · · Score: 3, Informative
    SASK CBC. I work about 100 Yards from ISM's building (the folks responsible for the lost drive).

    Some interesting things have been reported in the media around here. Some have said the data was encrypted, and that it was unlikely that anyone could get the data. If it was encrypted with anything recent, it would be near impossible to get the information off of it. If I were talking to the media and new it was encrypted

    It was also mentioned that information was in a database, and the tables couldn't be linked very easily... but who really knows.