Posted on 05/07/2009 3:28:35 AM PDT by Schnucki
Sensitive data detailing launch procedures for a US military missile air defence system have been found on a second-hand computer hard drive bought on eBay.
More than 300 hard disks were studied and researchers uncovered other sensitive information including bank account details, medical records, confidential business plans, financial company data, personal id numbers, and job descriptions.
The drives were bought from the UK, America, Germany, France and Australia through computer auctions, computer fairs and on the online auction site eBay.
The exercise was carried out by BT's Security Research Centre in collaboration with the University of Glamorgan in Wales, Edith Cowan University in Australia and Longwood University in the US.
A spokesman for BT said they found 34 per cent of the hard disks scrutinised contained "information of either personal data that could be identified to an individual or commercial data identifying a company or organisation."
The researchers concluded that a "surprisingly large range and quantity of information that could have a potentially commercially damaging impact or pose a threat to the identity and privacy of the individuals involved was recovered as a result of the survey."
Perhaps most surprising was the discovery of a disk bought on eBay that revealed details of test launch procedures for the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) ground to air missile defence 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I have found the hard drive utilities at http://www.runtime.org/
to be extremely useful for things like resurrecting the data from a crashed drive, a mistakenly formatted drive...etc.
About the only way you can delete data so these utils cannot recover it is to overwrite all the sectors of the hd.
I don't think this is correct. I believe it was Patriot (PAC-3) missiles used for shooting down the Scuds.
ping
“About the only way you can delete data so these utils cannot recover it is to overwrite all the sectors of the hd.”
I work for a company that deals with healthcare data and payroll data. Our policy as written and carried out is total destruction of all storage media as it leaves the commpany. I take the PC’s over to our recycling partner and verify as they put the drives through a machine that eats them and spits the guts out the bottom. They can destroy 12 drives at a time.
You’re right, I don’t think THAAD is even officially deployed or operational yet...is it?
In May 2008, the US Army activated the first THAAD battery unit at Fort Bliss, Texas, which will receive 24 missiles, three launchers, one fire control and one radar unit for initial fielding. This is in preparation for full system fielding in 2009.
There is apparently one active battery, but it hasn't been fielded anywhere yet.
They may now be operational, but they were definitely not when the Scuds were flying six years ago.
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