It is important that when an IT asset is disposed of, all sensitive information is destroyed for obvious purposes. However, there are times when an error may occur due to negligence leaking critical data in the process.
One such incident occurred a few days ago when a German military laptop was sold on eBay for just €90 inclusive of the shipping cost. Purchased by a firm named G Data which specializes in cybersecurity, they reported the entire incident in a company blog post on 16 March.
See: World’s most dangerous laptop has been sold for $1.3 million
The computer, a product of Roda featured a 128 MB RAM and was running on Windows 2000 & an Intel Pentium III processor. When dug further, it turns out that the laptop contained sensitive information including military secrets.
Here is a photo of the laptop that was being sold on eBay:
Image credit: G Data
Identified to be originating from Bundeswehr – the German army – an administrator program was found on it called MODIS which had “GUEST” as its username already entered.
Trying “Guest” in the password field as well yielded fruit as the program logged in granting access. This led the researchers to find details of a tank equipped with an anti-aircraft system known as Ocelot. Additional information on its schematics, maintenance and operations were also available.
Image of the tank: G Data
As for how they ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
