Unclean Military Hard Drives Sold On eBay 369
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."
I have to wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:I have to wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Uh, what makes you think that they aren't? Your comment is utterly devoid of value unless you can prove a negative somehow. Good luck!
Re:I have to wonder (Score:5, Funny)
Your comment is utterly devoid of value unless you can prove you have something worthwhile to respond with. Good luck!
Re:I have to wonder (Score:5, Funny)
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Do retorts like yours really pass for good reasoning on Slashdot?
What makes you think that the Universe isn't containing within the eye of a pink singing elephant? Your view on the Universe is utterly devoid of value unless you can prove a negative somehow. Good luck!
Concentrate carefully: when event e happens, we can make a list of events f_1...f_n that we think might lead to e. Let's hypothesise that one such event f_j leads to e. Our first mission is deductive - to demonstrate that f_j can lead to e, and
Re:I have to wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
"prove a negative"? [google.com]
Follow any of the links and never use that idiotic phrase again.
Re:I have to wonder (Score:4, Funny)
I'm so sorry I got caught speaking English. Next time I'll try to translate into nerd-speak so that those of you with slide whistles in your assholes will pipe down.
Re:I have to wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
... wouldn't you think that at least one group of criminals would be buying as many of these drives as possible?
Well the black market is a quite complicated. The only groups with enough funding and enough motive to even try to obtain this information (disregarding the middlemen that you're mentioning) would be other nations. Let's say you're an exceptional nerd with enough skills to extract this data into usable form (I think it would be fair to say that many /.-ers fit or could fit this profile given some time to research). How would you go about selling this information to let's say North Korea? Who would you contact? Better yet, who would they allow you to speak to? I doubt you can just pick up the phone and ask the operator to "hook you up with the illest of Kim Jongs". But let's say you actually do get to speak with him (or anybody of importance really). How's your Korean? Ok final hypothesis, let's say you actually do speak Korean. What are you going to say? It's not like you're calling from AT&T to offer him 5$ less monthly fee if he subscribes to the service for 24 additional months.
Basically I see where you're coming from but I wouldn't take the procedure so lightly. Plus there's possibly a lot more important information floating around somewhere that never "got in the wrong hands" as well.
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Let's think this through: I am a smartie who knows computers and is interested in blackmail. Where do I get thosehard disks? you see, ebay and such are markets, so you have to tell them where you want those disks sent, under what name, on which credit card....then you must retrieve them, probably giving some proof of identity.
So, given that my objectives are:
1. get rich;
2. do NOT get caught in the process;
I do not think that's the best option.
Re:I have to wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
After reading the book 'spies among us' I've learned that making contact for selling information is just as simple as walking
to an embassy/consulate from the specific country and asking to speak with someone about information..
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Hmm. I could probably round up half a dozen Korean-speakers who can run a disk-recovery application properly, given an hour or two. Ok, so, I live in a university town and I have an advantage, I'll admit it.
But I think that it's entirely possible that someone who has run a couple of small scams successfully could parlay that cash into buying several hundred hard drives. Finding name/SSN sets on one of these hard drives has plenty of value for identity thieves right here in the U. S. of A. It's not only the
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First off, blackmail doesn't hit the news, that's the whole point. You tell the company what you've got and threaten to use it against them and get paid off.
Personally I wouldn't blackmail a defence contractor, all things considered but there are those with larger gonads than I though.
Secondly, a lot of criminals go with what they're good at. Just because a new avenue of crime exists doesn't mean it will be taken advantage of immediately.
Just think how long the Internet was a big open place before we star
Unclean? (Score:5, Informative)
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I agree. If you have sensitive data on a disk (or paper or anything else) DESTROY it. Fire is best and most useful but other methods are possible.
Re:Unclean? (Score:4, Funny)
Fire is best and most useful but other methods are possible.
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Re:Unclean? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unclean? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most DoD member units approve DBAN already. Especially when it's set to the platter-melting 35-pass Guttman Wipe.
The problem is when someone DOESN'T follow proper procedures. Rules are great and all, but someone is always going to break them in some way
Re:Unclean? (Score:4, Informative)
Since you apparently don't know what you're talking about: the 35-pass wipe is bullshit, and even the author says so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutmann_method#Criticism [wikipedia.org]
Essentially some of those patterns are specifically for obsolete MFM drives, and others are specifically for equally obsolete RLL drives. Nowadays you should just use random patterns, and even the DoD is fine with 7 passes.
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Don't be a prick with such a short fuse.
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There are faster methods for most drives: http://ultraparanoid.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/securely-erase-hard-drives/ [wordpress.com]
Re:Unclean? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Unclean? (Score:5, Funny)
When you said The American Security Service (acronym to be determined) I thought for sure, you were going to start a wiping service!
Scary that they sold the disk at all (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scary that they sold the disk at all (Score:5, Interesting)
There are much quicker ways then that. In fact, at my old office, we had NSA approved degaussing equipment for hard drives, that destroyed the data permanently (no amount of forensics will be able to retrieve it), but left the drive itself intact for reuse or resale.
The fun part of course is that when you turn it on.. 2 or 3 floors of lights all dimmed at the same time for a few seconds while it powered up and it hummed.. loudly... Thats a powerful magnet :)
Re:Scary that they sold the disk at all (Score:5, Informative)
Modern drives have "servo tracks" on them - used for setting the head position. If you use an eraser powerful enough to wipe the drive, then the servo track is most likely also wiped - rendering the drive totally useless to most folk.
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To be fair, he did say "for reuse or resale". He didn't specify what KIND of use. You could use it a a paperweight, a doorstop, a hammer ... the possibilities are endless! And then you're done using it, you can always sell it on e-bay.
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Don't forget that modern drives use material with obscenely high coercivity so that the domains don't spontaneously flip their neighbors. If you use a magnet powerful enough to randomize the platters, you'll warp all the steel parts.
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Re:Scary that they sold the disk at all (Score:4, Informative)
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No, there is a probability that the random data is the same as the original. Would you take that chance?
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If you have access to dd, you probably have access to shred. It makes several passes using different patterns (25 by default), and has the option of zeroing the drive on the last pass. I believe it meets DOD standards. I'm not sure how effective it is with slack space, which often holds recoverable data even after running utilities that are supposed to wipe data off drives, but dd wouldn't be any better.
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The problem with shred (and indeed any such utility) is that it doesn't account for application behaviour. What if some application that uses the file re-writes it - eg. because of some change to the file - to a different filehandle than the one the file was originally read from?
What if at some point the file was read into memory and that memory was swapped out by the OS? There are lots of quite reasonable scenarios where there are fragments of the file sitting around indefinitely.
please... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [16systems.com]
Re:please... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible that the people most likely to have the resources and expertise to do this (i.e. govt. security depts.) don't want to announce that they have this capability ...
That cuts both ways (Score:3, Interesting)
It is possible that the people who want to sell you a product don't want to announce the capability they wish to sell you is not necessary.
Besides, if the government is after you, they have such a variety of options to figure out what goes on (pin cameras, laser mics, various other forms of mics, analysis programs that can guess what you are typing, installation of keyloggers, and just simple acquisition with legal means like a warrant) that worrying about whether they may, beyond all known capabilities of
Re:please... (Score:5, Funny)
In the UK, the government uses magnetic fields generated by train seats to erase sensitive data.
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Re:please... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would any company enter a challenge like that? What data recovery company would comply to this: "You also must publicly disclose in a reproducible manner the method(s) used to win the challenge."?
Regardless of wheter it is possible or not, it is definately not worth the trouble for anyone.
Re:please... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The last reputable data recovery company I dealt with charged us $1500 to recover a dead laptop drive. They gave us a new drive that was nearly perfectly recovered from the old dead, dropped, damaged drive.
That may seem like real money to some people, but it was worth it to the client in question. Why on earth would they do even more work for one third the money?
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It's a slap in the face to any legitimate data recovery business to be "challenged" like that.
But I thought a slap in the face was the proper way to announce your challenge!
What a joke (Score:2)
1) If I could recover data from a zeroed drive, I'd charge a lot more than USD500 to do it. Why? Because there will be people who would pay.
2) I'd charge a LOT more to show you how to do it with NDA etc.
3) I'd charge even more to publicly disclose to everyone how to do it.
Secondly this from the website is even funnier: "Yes, if your company is an established, professional data recovery company (see below). Send a self-addressed, postage-paid box with packaging material to the addres
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No matter that you must include reproducible instructions on how to do this.
DoD wiping standards (Score:5, Informative)
"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."
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Oblig,
In Soviet Russia, the drive wipes you...
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I can't find that anywhere in the actual document. Which page is it on, and which edition of the document?
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I heard of DoD personnel taking hard drives to drill presses to render them useless. I'm not sure if they were also degaussed/erased prior to or what information was originally on them.
Re:DoD wiping standards (Score:5, Interesting)
Certain 3 letter facilities in the US do that.. in fact, any electronic equipment going in.. never leaves. I have seen the destruction of a thumb drive that accidentally made it into the facility (many people arrived for a meeting there), but was caught on the way out and destroyed.
Same facility provides all electronic equipment needed for various press events and what not.
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I wonder:
What if you had photographic memory and were a good artist. Would they let you out?
What if you had memory issues with your brain and thus have a prosthetic memory installed to help you?
Re:DoD wiping standards (Score:5, Funny)
What if you had memory issues with your brain and thus have a prosthetic memory installed to help you?
What if the aliens came, and took you back to your home planet?
Financial Firms Do the Same (Score:5, Informative)
So while this example is no better, I believe it highlights an ongoing problem that involves better user education and disk encryption helps solve.
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Of course this is something no reader of SlashDot would ever condone... Right...
Because the typical Slashdot reader is a thief?
Stupid thing is, your post actually had an interesting anecdote and made a good point. And then you decided to close off with a nice, unnecessarily dickish comment.
Little OT Anecdote (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Little OT Anecdote (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is not necessarily from a gov branch, but most likely a supporting contractor, in this case Lockheed martin.
Same reason why those same contractors are forbidden from using VPN from gov facilities (DOD and Federal atleast) to their home offices. In the past, a certain contractor from a certain company at a certain 5 pointed facility introduced some lovely malware that spread like wildfire fromthe contractors company to the gov facility.
However, like I said, while policy says what not to do, deadlines and management looking the other way sometimes to meet those deadlines and whatnot go against those policies, sometimes nothing happens, sometimes bad things happen.
In other news.. (Score:5, Funny)
Fine Print: THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE SYSTEM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW
Why not just destroy these disks? (Score:3, Insightful)
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My guess was that this was not a DoD system, and probably not at the DoD facilities, but rather at the contractor facilities.
They are however (which is written into the contract that was signed when the project was awarded) required to comply with DoD regulations. It appears that in this case, probably during a technology refresh would be my guess, that there was a shit ton of old equipment, and the IT folks got lazy, since securely wiping a drive without a degausser of sorts takes a very long time.
Re:Why not just destroy these disks? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes it's easier to detect a security problem by letting some information leak.
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Especially if they have fingerprints of the data on each drive, and tracked which one went where for disposal.
Nearly right... (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:Nearly right... (Score:4, Funny)
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
So you're saying this Area 51 map and Build-Your-Own Nuke instructions I have here might be bogus?
Who is really to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably illegally sold (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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the five-sided building
...most buildings have a roof and 4 walls, so that doesn't exactly narrow it down.
Is it just me... (Score:5, Funny)
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...
For Highly Classified Data, it's more than a wipe (Score:4, Informative)
I worked in a highly classified facility once. The wipe "standard" was to hire a lowly intern (such as myself), remove the platters from the case, take them out back, and sandblast them. The agencies scientists had decided degaussing wasn't good enough.
SirWired
Re:For Highly Classified Data, it's more than a wi (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like gruntwork to me (Score:2, Funny)
First part of story. 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.
I just had a mental image of a private being assigned a sharpie and a room full of hard drives, furiously writing 1010 on each one.
DoD standards (Score:2, Interesting)
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Note that document only covers unclassified data.
Say what? (Score:3, Funny)
wiping the whole disk and then writing 1010 all over it.
Did exactly that. Removed it from a computer. Wiped all over the disk. Then took a marker and wrote all over it. For additional security, wiped it *again* to remove the marker. And you nuts are still claiming there's secrets on it...
</fiction>
A+++++ Vendor! (Score:5, Funny)
Wiping the whole disk by writing 1010 (Score:2, Funny)
The problem with writing 1010 all over the disk is that it only covers an extremely tiny fraction of the disk. Most modern drives are much larger than 4 bits.
It is also highly inefficient since the OS would always have to read a whole sector (typically 512 bytes) and modify it in memory before writing it back again to avoid changing any bits outside of those 4 that are to be wiped!
So, why not just sell it on eBay and hope the buyer wipes the disk before using it?
Does the IRS do it better or worse? (Score:3, Informative)
I work for the IRS and we supposedly use the DOD standard. Our wiping software actually has a "/DOD" switch. However, unlike the standard quoted in another post, our software just reinitializes the MBR and then does 7 random overwrites. Is that better or worse than writing patterns? I dunno.
I do know, however, that we never let a drive out of our inventory without a wipe. If the drive has failed completely, we have a big magnetic blanker we use. (Local option - in my office, we then take those drives apart, abuse the platters, and one of our techs makes sculptures from them. Neat stuff.)
As an aside, we never RMA drives, either. If a drive in our possession fails, we call for a warranty replacement and send back in the return box a signed statement swearing that we destroyed the old drive. If a laptop has a failure that requires a contractor tech to replace parts, we make them come on-site then have someone stand over them the whole time to make sure they don't try to actually read anything off the drive.
I would expect the military to do at least as well. Am I wrong?
SInce When (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps we should find new ways to motivate them (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is that most of this stuff happens through employee laziness, and contractor unaccountability. If you have lobbyists lairing in government to ensure that you keep the contracts no matter what and are able to hide anything under the "national security" red herring then why bother enforcing rules like wiping stuff properly? The idea of being held PERSONALLY responsible, with potential jail time will make people stop and think, specially if the command level have no loophole to blame their underlings for anything the press find out about.
Contractor drive, not military (Score:2)
For all anyone knows it could have been stolen.
wipe? destroy! (Score:2)
Media is cheap nowadays. Just destroy the disk.
Great Quote (Score:2)
Induction Cooker (Score:2)
Has anyone here ever used an induction cooker [wikipedia.org] to wipe/destroy a hard drive?
It seems that should be effective and entertaining.
Disks full of porn "sold to military" (Score:2)
[probably to post [today.com] tomorrow]
Gigabytes and gigabytes of pornography and highly sensitive login details for gentleman's art sites were bought by a US military missile air defence base second-hand on eBay.
The artistic pamphlets were found on a hard disk for the SPLORT (Super-Powered Less Obviously Retronymed Thing) ground to air missile defence system, used to shoot down Scum missiles in Iraq.
Dr Andy Jones, a researcher at the base, said "This is the fourth time we have carried out this research and it is
This doesn't make sense... (Score:2, Informative)
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There's your leak right there!
Erase and 0 7 times (Score:2)
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Same reason you can still buy new technology 40g drives... because 100 striped 40 gig drives will absolutely destroy 4 1tb drives in performance and redundancy....
Atleast when it comes to SAN infrastructure..
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The end-users probably aren't (officially) selling their used drives; they're probably selling their three year old machines by the kilo to an authorised disposal agent, who in turn wipes the drives (or is contractually supposed to do so) then either sells the machines as used, or breaks them into components for sale as used.
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Why does anyone sell hard drives second hand, anyways? Most organizations and people buy them, and keep using the old disk until it either dies or becomes so obsolete that it's no longer worth using. How much value does some old 60 gig hard drive have on ebay, anyways? New 1 terrabyte drives are a mere $70 at newegg!
I can imagine that the drives might come from retired PCs. Many companies replace their PCs every X years for various reasons: their lease ran out, the PCs are too underpowered for current software, or upgrading/maintaining the old machines becomes too much of a hastle.
After disposal/donation/selling those PCs have to go somewhere, so I'd imagine they get broken up into their main components and sold off. Selling a PII-266 might be a tall order but someone might want that 60GB HD.
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[citation needed]
Not trying to be an ass, but there's a lot of misinformation out there on these "DoD wipe standards." Lots of people are throwing around these things, but I've only seen one person trying to back it up with something from the DoD.