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Unclean Military Hard Drives Sold On eBay
An anonymous reader writes "The Daily Mail reports, 'Highly sensitive details of a US military missile air defense system were found on a second-hand hard drive bought on eBay.
The test launch procedures were found on a hard disk for the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) ground to air missile defense system, used to shoot down Scud missiles in Iraq.
The disk also contained security policies, blueprints of facilities, and personal information on employees (including social security numbers) belonging to technology company Lockheed Martin — who designed and built the system.'
Scary that they did not wipe it to Department of Defense standards, which I believe is wiping the whole disk and then writing 1010 all over it."
Later:
Where are the corresponding crimes? If a third of the used hard drives on the market really contain such detailed personal or business information, wouldn't you think that at least one group of criminals would be buying as many of these drives as possible? Granted that there would be capital outlay, but a lot of that is recovered by selling the drives again through the vary same channels, and the risk of getting caught would be extremely low. Quantity of information is lower than with network-based methods (eg, keyloggers, sniffers, etc.) or other information-gathering methods, but I would think the quality of the gathered data would be much, much higher. Good enough to resell for a relatively high amount.
It seems, to me, that there is a bit of hyperbole going on here.
I guess we'll need to format them in a purifying fire then.
You can wipe a disk with "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda" and nobody will get anything from it after that, but the problem isn't the technical feasibility of securely wiping a hard disk: It's a problem of procedure. If hard disks are sold, there's always going to be a mishap where disks which were supposed to be wiped are not and sold with the data intact. Also, why was this data not encrypted? Anyway, hard disks are just not worth enough to take these risks. Destroy the disks and do it in-house.
Before people start discussing if drives should be overwritten 32 or 2^32 times, please show me ONE proven example of a regularly zeroed drive being recovered.
This challenge has stood for more than a year.
http://16systems.com/zero.php
"which I believe is wiping the whole disk and then writing 1010 all over it."
Taken from DoD 5220.22-M Wipe Standard:
"[...]DoD requires overwriting with a pattern, then its complement, and finally with another pattern; e.g., overwrite first with 0011 0101 [35h], followed by 1100 1010 [CBh], then 1001 0111 [97h]. The number of times an overwrite must be accomplished depends on the storage media, sometimes on its sensitivity, and sometimes on differing DoD component requirements. In any case, a purge is not complete until a final overwrite is made using unclassified data."
I perform computer forensics work, and part of my research towards obtaining my degree was going to the MIT Swap Meet (great event) and buying used hard disks from vendors on occasion. In about 90% of the cases, the user appeared to have simply "deleted" the files, with nothing more. Now, I would expect this for a normal home user, not knowing any better, but the biggest thing of concern was the number of drives that came from various corporate entities. I was able to see and read data from drives that clearly came from several major banks, including mortgage apps, SSN's, corporate planning documents, etc. Again, the files appeared to have been simply "deleted" by the IT folk, instead of securely wiped, making it trivial at best to read everything.
So while this example is no better, I believe it highlights an ongoing problem that involves better user education and disk encryption helps solve.
I used to work for a major OEM whose clients included the military, along with other branches of the US government. The military in particular had a "strict" policy about hard drives: they did NOT RMA them EVER. If a PC of theirs was to be returned or sent in for service, it arrived without the hard drive.
What's the point of such strict policy towards your supplier if some dumbass from within will just pawn it off on Ebay?? It's not the first time this happens.
..the market is being flooded with Chinese made ground to air missile defence systems, available for a quarter of the price, and half the accuracy.
Fine Print: THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE SYSTEM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW
scary that they did not wipe it to Department of Defense standards which I believe is wiping the whole disk and then writing 1010 all over it.
That's nearly right. The actual procedure is to wipe it to DoD standards, and then load it up with fake documents.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Did lockheed actually own these machines, or do they lease them? My guess is LM (like most larger companies) has a contract with someone like CSC/IBM/etc who actually owns, maintains, and replaces machines. This is probably where the ball was dropped. Every 3 years here CSC replaces 10s of thousands of PCs that they are itching to sell off before they depreciate into worthlessness. I can certainly see them taking short cuts, or missing a few. This is the problem with outsourcing IT infrastructure. They don't always really understand or care about the same thing as you.
The drives were probably illegally sold. DoD requires the destruction of classified drives, and contractors are supposed to follow the same rules. If the drive(s) in question held classified data (which they apparently did), they should have been wiped, then physically destroyed. Sounds like someone bypassed the last step, and tried to make a little profit on the side, by selling the "destroyed" drive.
Disclaimer: I work for a contractor on a US Government contract, working with classified data. (at the five-sided building)
Or are these types of stories probably sponsored by E-Bay's PR department..
:D
:D:D
Just think of all those people now bidding on old hard drives now... Probably won't be able to pick one up for under £99 by the end of the week
That reminds me... Got a few old ones to sell myself...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
A++++++++++++ service! Quick shipping, and free military secrets included! Would buy from again.
Why does the DoD not simply destroy the disks in question?
Sometimes it's easier to detect a security problem by letting some information leak.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
?? why would sandblasting an intern help in wiping the disk?