Nuclear missile buster details found on second-hand computer
By John Lister
If you buy a second-hand computer, you’ve got a one in three chance of finding some data which ought to be confidential. If you’re really lucky, you could learn more about shooting down enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Researchers in an international project headed by Britain’s University of Glamorgan bought 300 used hard drives from computer fairs and online auction sites. Thirty-four percent had retrievable data which was either personal information about an identifiable individual, or commercial data from an identifiable organization.
The most notable data find was details of the test launch procedure for Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, a United States surface-to-air missile system best known for its use in Iraq. The BBC reports that the system was still active and being tested as recently as March. The same computer contained details such as social security numbers for contractors Lockheed Martin. The firm says it’s unaware of any security breach.
Another computer came from a US bank and contained details of a proposed $50 billion currency exchange through Spain, complete with account numbers and even a letter from a Federal Reserve Board member questioning the deal.
Other details included security logs from Germany’s embassy in France, client lists of a British fashion company, and patient records from a British hospital group including x-ray images. That group says it employed a contractor to dispose of computer equipment and blames it for not following security procedures.
Professor Andrew Blyth, who headed the project, said the data retrieval techniques he used were not particularly complicated: “I could probably take somebody who is 14 or 15-years-old and in a day have them doing this.”
The report follows a study by consumer magazine Which? Computing in January which recovered 22,000 files which had supposedly been deleted across eight second-hand computers. The magazine recommended that readers physically destroy a disk to ensure security.
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May 8th, 2009
This kind of stuff happens all the time – If was China I’d simply be buying up thousands of old computers in areas where defense personel live and work, and I’m sure they would gain access to all sorts of interesting information.