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Military Secrets for Sale on Stolen USB Drives
nTrfAce writes "Per a BBC Article, "US forces in Afghanistan are checking reports that stolen computer hardware containing military secrets is being sold at a market beside a big US base.
Shopkeepers at a market next to Bagram base, outside Kabul, have been selling memory drives stolen from the facility, the Los Angeles Times newspaper says.""
I hope that those soldiers were using strong encryption for file systems. ...
I hope that those soldiers were not storing sensible data on those drives.
I hope that those soldiers were not storing weird photos involving prisoners
Real world tends to be different from hopes!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Windows - it's that insecure, you don't even need physical access to a machine to steal it's componants! ;-)
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
...but how do they know the 'secrets' are actually that and not some kind of decoy?
Let me be the first to ask: Why the hell is the military storing sensitive data on USB drives, which are prone to both theft and failure?
Why and when are rules ignored?
Here in the Netherlands, there has been a series of cases where sensitive information has leaked through stolen/lost hardware, and every time some official was breaking the rules.
The rules were unworkable: DO NOT TAKE YOUR WORK HOME.
So, no reading of a report on the train, no after-dinner report writing. Nothing. Ambitious people break the rules to perform better. So they take stuff home anyway. As long as the hardware doesn't get stolen, nothing is noticed. Big publicity when sensitive information makes it to the press.
But if they were to start policing the policy, a lot of the ambitious people would eventually give in to the rules, and simply watch tv after dinner, and read the newspaper on the train. Results? Productivity drop.
So it's not large scale, hyperterrorsquads selling supersensitive secret soldier material to themselves. but rather small bits of pieces, that together will probably seem as just that. small bits of pieces. It is however always unfortunate that personal and classified information is handled carelessly, but if we can't even handle this properly at home, why should it be any better in Afghanistan.
I'll give the answer right here: First, get better at handling information security at home, before you start using the technology abroad.
Don't give sensitive material to people who haven't been screened on how they handled it (I thought this was already a goal the tried to achieve)
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
The BBC article is based on a LA Times article which contains more details like the fact that on the thumb drives they found a list of soldier's SSNs which which they were able to track down the soldier's home addresses.
Original LA Times article
"Intelligence seems to be one of the few things the military doesn't overpay for - one Afghan spying on al Qaeda gets $15 for every successful mission."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
SSN should stand for Supposedly Secret Number.
Everybody knows your SSN. Every employer you've had, every school you've been to, everybody you've applied for credit from, every company that's provided a service like long distance to you. Also, every firm any of those organizations have contracted out their data handling to.
Fewer people know what shoe size you wear.
Similarly we've had several reports in the press about MI5/6 agents/staff leaving their laptops in Taxi's - whenever data is portable it is at risk of loss or theft...
You normally don't use USB drives as boot drives.
Good points above, but there are a couple of things that I would like to know:
1. How big are the drives? I find that my 256MB one fills up all the time. If these are 512MB or more, I may want one.
2. How much? I can get a (new) 1GB drive at Costo for $60 (Canadian), so I'd hope these (used) ones are going for less then that.
Mission accomplished!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Poor guys... Now their addresses are in the hands of the entrepreneurs in Kabul... they're going to be getting tons of junk mail for "Habib's Roof and Tile" and "Afghan National Platinum MasterCard"... :(
Hm. Invading a country. Letting the invaded people work for you at your base with your stuff. And now there's stuff missing you say? Really? Who would've thought ....
We just assume the information is some military secret. There is a distict possibility that the information on those drives is nothing more than family pictures or some other relatively mundane piece of information. I have friends in the FBI who have thumb drives and I just assume that the information on them is classified, but in truth, I know that it is probably a collection of pictures of them at the local bar or on vacation that they are toting to the local photo lab for processing. Nothing like a good reason to freak out though, right?!
We'll find out on CNN sometime that the drives contained Osama's location, Sadam's smoking gun, Slobadan Milosevich's memoirs, and Jimmy Hoffa's remains...oh, and the location of Salmon Rushdie's appartment that he shares with Elvis, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot.
Windows - it's that insecure, you don't even need physical access to a machine to steal it's componants! ;-)
Somewhere in California (IIRC) there is a company that specializes in providing military aircraft for the movie industry. At the time he appeared in a documentary which I watched, the owner of this business had apparently assembled more than one Cobra Gunship from parts sold off by the Armed Forces as scrap and was well on his way toward assembling (what was at the time at least) a state-of-the-art Apache assault helecopter using parts draw from similar sources (they showed footage of it being assembled). According to this guy some of the things the US armed forces sell off to civillans as 'scrap' are downright scary both because they are sometimes dangerous (contain live munitions, toxic materials, rocket engines, etc..) and because this 'scrap' includes some pretty sensetive electronic equipment. So stolen PC's are not the only problem, the US armed forces quite freely sells off some pretty amazing stuff as junk. True enough, the information on a stolen PC can cause a significant security breach but an enemy nation getting it's hands on sensetive military electronics at a scrap auction is even worse. I suppose the way the military filters equipment for disposal may have improved over the last few years but somehow I doubt it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I have your military secrets right here! It's yours for only 3 easy payments of 19.95?! That's right only 19.95! And if you act now before you finish reading this post, we'll throw in keys to the pentagon, absolutely FREE!!!! *NY residents must pay sales tax. Offer only good in the continent u.s.