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British MoD Stunned By Massive Data Loss
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Oct 11, 2008 03:41 AM
from the austin-powers-meets-the-peter-principle dept.
from the austin-powers-meets-the-peter-principle dept.
Master of Transhuman writes "Seems like nobody can keep their data under wraps these days. On the heels of the World Bank piece about massive penetrations of their servers, the British Ministry of Defense has lost a hard drive with the personal details of 100,000 serving personnel in the British armed forces, and perhaps another 600,000 applicants. This comes on the heels of the MoD losing 658 of its laptops over the past four years and 26 flash drives holding confidential information. Apparently the MoD outsources this stuff to EDS, which is under fire for not being able to confirm that the data was or was not encrypted."
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IT: World Bank Under Cybersiege In "Unprecedented Crisis" 377 comments
JagsLive sends in a Fox News report on large-scale and possibly ongoing security breaches at the World Bank. "The World Bank Group's computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned. It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution's highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank's network for nearly a month in June and July. In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month. In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank's senior technology manager referred to the situation as an 'unprecedented crisis.' In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution. And it has left bank officials scrambling to try to understand the nature of the year-long cyber-assault, while also trying to keep the news from leaking to the public." Update: 10/11 01:15 GMT by T : Massive spyware infestations might be good cause to reevaluate the TCO of non-Windows systems on the desktop.
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Hardly 3 hours (Score:2, Insightful)
Hardly 3 hours since the last post on /. about
UK Govt wanting to spy.
Re:Hardly 3 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
They want to spy more so they can gather more information to lose.
Seriously, lately it seems not a week goes by without some ridiculous data leak in the UK. Whether it be thumbdrives that automatically log into private networks, laptops being stolen, documents being left on a train, confidential information being lost in the post etc...
They won't need the Data Protection Act much longer in the UK because there'll be no data left to protect as it'll all have been leaked.
Parent
Re:Hardly 3 hours (Score:5, Funny)
or they're just moving to a more distributed data system, they want to spy on you so they can see the data you now hold. Its like a bittorrent data-storage solution, all these 'lost' laptops and pendrives is a secret mechanism of distributing the data in the most widely and random way - thus adding to the security of the overall system, as no-one else knows where its ended up.
See, its simple really :-)
Parent
Re:Hardly 3 hours (Score:4, Insightful)
"I'm just looking forward to when the data gets lost."
From the summary of that post. 3 hours ago.
...Holy Crap.
We know they're abusing their power. We know that they're incompetent!
And it never changes! It just happens again and again and again!
I don't know whether to laugh or cry or scream or kill or just give up anymore. I just don't know.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We know they're abusing their power. We know that they're incompetent!
And it never changes! It just happens again and again and again!
Isn't that the definition of a government?
Government Incompetence? (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. Where I work [irs.gov], any laptop connected to the network is checked at every connection for the presence of active full disk encryption software. If it isn't found (which can happen when computers are being built and the encryption installation hasn't been completed) then an immediate alert is sent to the support staff nearest the machine. In response to that alert, the machine must be encrypted or seized immediately. We're talking same-day action, here, with the consequence of inaction being that someone gets fired.
The result is that when we lose (usually through theft but the method is unimportant in this context) a laptop, we can immediately report that said laptop was fully encrypted and no data was lost or is at risk.
If we need to let a contractor on our network, we set up one of our laptops to meet all security requirements and lend that hardware to the contractor. No contractor is allowed to put their machine on our network.
Finally, when data is written to removable media, it's encrypted. We run a software package (Guardian Edge) that forces all writes to removable media to be encrypted. It's a pain sometimes, but it's the least we can do to keep the publics private data safe.
Frankly, I'm shocked that the MOD would accept less stringent practices on the part of contractors. I know we don't.
Parent
Re:Government Incompetence? (Score:5, Insightful)
there's no inherent reason for the government to be incompetent. but it's always those who want to cut down on public infrastructure and social welfare programs that are incompetent themselves. of course when you elect such people into government they make a complete mess of things and use their own incompetence as an excuse to hand these roles over to the private sector.
i mean, how can you put people who don't believe in public infrastructure in charge of public infrastructure? it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Parent
MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
This:
is one of the best questions I've ever seen posted on Slashdot. With an election looming, it's a question that every voter should ask themselves. Whoever modded it flamebait is a dufus.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, the IRS, or HMRC here in the UK, would track down Osama bin laden if owed them a penny. Unfortunately, it seems he must file his tax returns on time...
Re:Government Incompetence? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know. I'm on the receiving end of those alerts, so I know they happen. Exactly how, I'm not sure. Our logon scripts do all sorts of stuff, including automatically installing updates to vertical apps, so checking for full disk encryption wouldn't seem to be too hard a task. I know there are certain files on the machines that do not exist until encryption has been installed and fully enabled. I assume that looking for them would be trivial. But that's just a guess.
To show you how tight our scans are, we had a contractor who plugged a personally-owned USB key into his IRS-issued laptop. It contained some basic maintenance tools as well as some network monitoring tools. He wanted some simple utility, I forget which one, and instead of asking for it through channels he just plugged in his copy. Literally *5* minutes after he plugged in the key, his machine was deleted from the domain and his personal identifier was wiped from all systems, just like we do when someone is fired. 5 minutes after that, his boss got a call from our security office explaining that the employee was being reviewed for termination. The boss explained that he was a good guy, new to the organization, just made a mistake, and asked for some slack. Ultimately, the guy got a two-week suspension and then had to re-build everything (system access permissions, etc.) as if he were newly hired.
I really don't question the notion that our monitoring does a good job of catching any funny business.
This is one of the areas where we take a notably sensible approach. Our security rules that each person must sign and obey do NOT prohibit writing down passwords. It's officially discouraged but not prohibited. We take the attitude that as long as that list is protected, like people protect their ID card, door key card, and credit card, there's no problem.
Nobody puts a sticker on the bottom of their laptop or keyboard. We have constant security inspections, usually after hours, and doing crap like that gets you disciplined severely.
I wont go into excess detail (which, by itself, would be a violation of our security rules) but suffice it to say that if you wanted to steal and get data off an IRS laptop, you'd have to mug the user, get their password list, know their internal ID (which no one writes down because we use it constantly) then mug a different person with local machine administrator credentials, get logons and passwords from that person, then know exactly where to type all of them in without making more than three mistakes to lock up the machine.
The only people who could successfully get information off our laptops would be our admins. But we can get to that stuff internally, already, so that's not a realistic threat.
Realistically, the only thing a thief can do with a stolen IRS laptop is wipe it, install an OS, and use it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We'd have to quell a revolt. Some of our people have repeated needs to move multi-gig data files from place to place. USB sticks have been a godsend. Given that some of our offices have such poor connectivity to the rest of the world, large file transfers used to require overnight or longer planning. Just moving a file from cube to manager's office for review could take hours. Now that they can sneakernet or mail a USB stick to move a
No, no, no (Score:5, Informative)
No. EDS lost a hard-drive, belonging to the MoD. Had to get that in before the "Government is intrinsically incompetent" posse got here. EDS, a privately owned and run subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard, subcontracting to the MoD, were responsible for the security of this drive, and they, not anyone at the MoD did the losing here.
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Insightful)
What exactly is the MoD doing sending out sensitive data to foreign private contractors? In fact, why are they giving anyone data at all?
Fuck Labour.
Parent
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Informative)
What? Do you really believe a politician made the decision on whom to outsource data management too?
Are you familiar with the concept of a civil service at all? Do you know who runs the day-to-day operations for the MoD?
Clue: Decisions like "Which subcontractor should we hire" are not made by the Secretary of State for Defence.
Parent
Re:No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
But the overuse of external subcontractors is a political decision. Fuck New Labour and fuck the Tories who started it all.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"Secretary of State for Defence" doesn't really make sense anyway
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you so apologetic on behalf of the British government? The drive was the responsibility of MoD. This includes the choice of people and/or organisations who do the handling. Likewise, even if the EDS was not the minister's choice, he should have been sacked because he hasn't made the decisions of this magnitude his choice.
Parent
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Informative)
Fuck Labour.
Yeah, because they are the ones who are more likely to out source work to a private company, right? Last time I checked, parties like Labour generally prefer that the government did it themselves, even if it costs more, and it's the opposition who are the ones who like to out source and privatise things.
Parent
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:No, no, no (Score:5, Informative)
In law under the Data Protection Act the MoD, not EDS, are the Data Controller and therefore responsible for losing it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe instead of paying 12 billion quid to spy on the British public it should instead be used to spy on EDS...
EDS, a privately owned and run subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard, subcontracting to the MoD, were responsible for the security of this drive, and they, not anyone at the MoD did the losing here.
WTF was the MoD doing letting this data near any foreign company? At the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are you reading impaired, or just an idiot?
No member of -- or person directly employed by -- the UK Government lost this data. EDS, a long-established, privately owned subsidiary of Hewlett Packard, lost this data.
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Insightful)
How does the fact that this company loses the gov'ts data not imply that the gov't loses data? Please tell me if this logic is flawed...
And does it actually matter who loses the data? I mean, I don't live there, I can't be arsed, it's not my private information but the whole point of my post was that the UK gov't loses data. Who exactly magically makes the disks or flashdrives disappear is besides the point.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And before you go blaming those dam' foreigners, EDS is in this business in the UK because they bought the large UK contractor Scicon back in the 1990's. So regardless of the ownership, the people responsible for the operational f-ups that caused loss of the drive are probably home-grown.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
So the problem is actually that the MoD is stupid enough to entrust their data with a private company that's too incompetent to avoid losing data? That's just as bad, I'm not sure what you're defending here.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Interesting)
EDS has been responsible for quite a number of screwed up Government IT projects in the UK. Somebody at the MoD was responsible for giving the data to that incompetent shower.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything this is worst than someone employed by the British Government losing the data. Security was breached when they let a foreign owned company have access to it. That that company lost the media is just the icing on the cake.
This is like the driving theory test data, lost from somewhere it should never have been in the first plac
Re: (Score:2)
Incompetent is one possibility... so is espionage. Perhaps it's a Bond PR stunt.
Mod Parent +1 Correct (Score:3, Insightful)
The MOD must demand from it's subcontractors a certain level of service, and be responsible for it. "Well it wasn't our fault, it was that guy" doesn't cut it when it comes to state secrets.
Get better subcontractors next time or DIY, retards.
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Interesting)
What utter fucktards.
(incidentally, posting this showed up an oddity of the URL parser - if the URL wraps so there's a space between 'href="' and 'http" then it breaks, big time.)
Parent
Encrypted or not? HAH! (Score:2)
As if that question makes an appreciable difference. Encrypted or not, data loss is data loss. It's bad security practice. Having the data encrypted will do just a tiny bit to save face, but it will hardly stop anyone who wants in.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Let me know when you've finished breaking TrueCrypt then, or PGP, or BitLocker, or FileVault. I'll be the one waiting over here. For a very, very long time...
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Encrypted or not? HAH! (Score:4, Insightful)
His point was that if someone wants the data, eg they actively stole the hard drive, then they are likely to steal or obtain the mechanism to decrypt the data too.
Parent
Combine this with the immediately preceding story (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Combine this with the immediately preceding sto (Score:4, Funny)
Information wants to be free.
Parent
I can! (Score:5, Funny)
this is the reason why... (Score:4, Funny)
this is the reason why the brits have to spy more....'cuz it's about quantity.....if u have more data coming in.....than that is going out (aka losing)...then u'r golden.
(I don't think it's a coincidence that this was posted after the bit about the brits needing to spy more)
News from MOD (Score:5, Informative)
Are they really being lost? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only time I have ever lost a device is when I was mugged and my phones were taken from me and I'm just any other person.
It should be interesting to see what the ratio of laptops lost to all laptops provided is. Maybe this cynicism is because I live in India where corruption is rampant and entire flyovers can be 'lost', but I'm a bit suspicious about this whole thing.
Also, if they're losing laptops with information at such a high rate, at what rate are they losing paper files? Surely it's harder to keep track of the 20 binders with 100 sheets in them than it is to keep track of one hard drive?
I find it hard to believe that these people are really that incompetent. Hanlon's Razor doesn't always apply.
Re:Are they really being lost? (Score:4, Informative)
Business travellers in the US and Europe lose a staggering 15,648 laptops per week, according to a new study by Dell. [itpro.co.uk]
So one shouldn't be surprised that laptops go missing, if the study is anything like accurate.
Parent
Re:Are they really being lost? (Score:4, Interesting)
It was standard practice for our head of accounting to take our backup tapes home for a few years. This year I saw some of our tapes just lying out in plain view on the passenger seat of his car, so I politely showed him a couple of stories about data loss when tapes were stolen from cars, and have been taking the tapes home myself now..
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How is it a questionable practice? Fires may not be very likely, and the servers are on the first floor (second in American terms) so we're not likely to have problems in a flood, but it's always better safe than sorry.
What would you do personally if you had ~250GB of data from various servers that needed to be regularly backed up? Would you still backup to tape but then just store them in a fireproof safe onsite? That should protect the tapes from most disasters, but you just never know, do you? We regularly have large cranes in the yard - if one of them were to topple or swing a heavy 20 foot container through the server room wall or something crazy like that, it could do some serious damage.
I think what the GP was saying was, I wouldn't want the liability associated with taking the tapes home myself. I mean, what if somebody did break into my car, or whatever? What if I got in an accident on my way home, and the tapes were destroyed? If there's any problem, I don't want to take them blame.
That's why I would pay somebody else to take care of it for me. Fortunately, it turns out that there's a company called EDS that offers just such a service! They do this kind of thing for plenty of other
Yet another example... (Score:5, Interesting)
...of why we shouldn't be outsourcing critical/sensitive data handling. Yes, Government departments can cock-up enough without external help, but so many of these data loss issues at the moment seem to be the fault of a private company they've outsourced to.
Also, I worry about the outsourcing of anything relating to our Country's security. When you give the job to the lowest bidder, what can you expect but a barely adequate service?
Privacy shmivacy (Score:2)
Contains everything you need for perfect ID theft (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA:
"The portable drive contains the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of around 100,000 serving personnel across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF, plus their next-of-kin details. "
Wow. Just... wow.
The person who finds this and wants to exploit it would become unimaginably rich on stolen identities for pretty much the rest of their lives. I suppose if the MoD have a record of exactly who's details were on the disk, they could re-issue things like national insurance numbers and driving licences to prevent that, but even then the possibilities for other avenues of exploitation using this information would be huge (next of kin, for pity's sake!!).
Data like this needs to be treated as if it were nuclear waste or a volatile explosive mixture. It would be just about OK to have a list of 100,000 driving licence numbers if these were kept physically separate from, say, names and addresses (eg keying them on a one-time ID), but when certain classes of data are kept TOGETHER like this, it should be every right-thinking person's reaction to scream the house down in panic.
We have to assume that at some point, all data will leak out somewhere. All we can do is to to ensure than when it does, it's not actionable. Oh, and by the way - you can forget encryption. People don't understand it and in most cases those who steal data will steal or otherwise obtain the keys as well.
Re: (Score:2)
yeah ... and since they bought the cheapest version of this hiden safty feature there will be only a tiny 'pling' after the counting finished (and not a big smoky explosion) ... and then the drive will continue to work as before...
Re: (Score:2)
Technically there are easy ways to do that (at least for individuals since the data protection act shouldn't let you see if data is being held on other people), but you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe that any company was using such a system properly. You also have to take into account backups being made of data, or possible malware on their systems [slashdot.org] that is taking a copy of data before they erase it themselves, and so on.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)