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Top Secret Brit Laptop Stolen

By Kevin Coleman Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 9:57 am
Posted in Cyber Security, Intelligence, International, Policy

The theft of laptops with ‘top secret’ government and military data has become a punch-line in the UK.

There were 28 laptops lost or stolen in the last four months and 66 in total since January 1, 2009. Looking back over the last 4 years there were 658 that vanished. A major hunt is now on in London after a laptop crammed with secret data was stolen from inside the Ministry of Defense (MoD) nerve center. FROM THEIR HEADQUARTERS!

How embarrassing taken from right under the noses of the MoD leadership in Whitehall. If the theft of the laptop was not bad enough, the USB type encryption key needed to unlock the highly sensitive files was also taken. The loss was said to have occurred toward the end of November but news of the event did not leak out until late last week and was not confirmed until earlier this week.

The laptop was said to belong to a high-ranking RAF officer. One agency is reporting that a source inside MoD stated, “This has the potential to become one of the most serious security breaches at the Ministry for a very long time.” A spokesman for the MoD said that “an investigation by MoD police is ongoing and it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

I wonder if anyone told the MoD that you can equip your laptops with GPS and have your laptop phone home and even delete sensitive data?

FACT: The current MoD budget is 36,702 million

FACT: MoDs principal objectives are to defend the United Kingdom and its interests and to strengthen international peace and stability

FACT: In 2006 on average one in ten laptops were stolen.

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	FSB December 22nd, 2009 at 6:17 pm U.K. OPSEC when it comes to cyber is, frankly, piss-poor and a shameful embarrassment. How many more laptops need to be stolen, and sensitive information compromised, before MoD does something about this?
	Daniel Russ December 22nd, 2009 at 8:31 pm Good point FSB. Also, how many lives might be lost because of it? Daniel Russ Civilianmilitaryintelligence group
	FSB December 22nd, 2009 at 5:16 pm @ Daniel Russ: I dare not imagine how many lives may have been lost because of lax cyber security within the U.K. national security establishment. A laptop is more than a keyboard and screen, it is a portable filing cabinet. Secure MoD laptops can hold countless classified documents of varying importance, and yet are being left in trains, taxis, pubs, and Lord knows elsewhere — and now are being stolen from under the MoD’s very nose. We would never let anyone, no matter how senior, keep filing cabinets stuffed with classified material in their own homes, but in this cyber-drenched age we let people wonder around anywhere with the 21st Century equivalent of the filing cabinet — the laptop. There is something fundamentally wrong with that.
	British and Sad December 22nd, 2009 at 10:16 pm Fact: The MoD is a job creation and sustainment organisation not an organisation for Defence of the Realm. Fact: The current Government is dangerously incompetent. Fact: The current Government is Labour so concerns itself only with Socialist projects. Fact: The MoD management is incompetent. Fact: The UK public are more concerned with other things e.g. Social Protection and the NHS. Fact: The UK public see military spending as wasteful and unneeded. Fact: The UK is bankrupt. Fact: The operations in Afghanistan are not properly resourced. Fact: The current ‘War’ in Afghanistan is unwinnable.
	John December 23rd, 2009 at 7:47 pm Pride, Loyalty, allegiance. This is what being British is !!! Err, sorry used to be ! If computers are going missing at a rate of over one per week, we the British obviously have some thieving MOD staff. Unfortunately it shows what British civil servants do in their spare time (sell stolen PC’s, OH, and our TOP SECRET information) Virtually every public organisation in the UK has lost information. I don’t know if the US government is as incompetent as the UK government, but this is our security they are supposed to be looking after. Independent (and I mean totally independent) bodies should be set up to hold politicians answerable to their decisions, even when they have left politics. .
	Jack December 23rd, 2009 at 11:19 pm Dear Sirs. Like a former agent in NCIS (MI5) 8 years in central Europe I know exact what’s going on, and I’m not surprise it all. British manner is best in a Pub and the English Gentlemen have a great connection to James Bond 007. It’s nothing behind anything, only a lot talking and nothing more. Effective in intelligence-organization is just the like Mr. Bond 007. A dream who never come true.…
	Warner December 23rd, 2009 at 11:44 pm 66 stolen Laptops !!! In the years 2009…I just wonder what else who have been ”taken away” without the public known. Whitehall is like a open Pub, full of important people and agents who spend more time in the Pub’s and tell how important they are. A lot of MP have ”con” the system and the same happened all over the place, Whitehall is no different.
	CharlesHouston December 24th, 2009 at 2:23 am I thought that a basic ability to write coherent English was required to be an agent for MI5. Something tells me that Jack is a high school kid in France.
	BuddhalovesPaine December 24th, 2009 at 11:50 pm WTF
	RSF December 25th, 2009 at 11:47 am What’s sad is that there is FREE encryption software available that once installed would render stolen lap tops essentially junk without the owners password. It boggles that mind that this level of stupidity continues in regard to mobile devices loaded with critical national security information. http://www.truecrypt.org/
	William C. December 26th, 2009 at 12:52 am I have plenty of respect for our British comrades in uniform fighting alongside our troops. However it seems as if the MoD hasn’t been properly funded since 1945. Just look at the Royal Navy since then.
	Bill - FBM '68-'00 December 27th, 2009 at 10:08 pm What’s really sad is that whoever stole the laptop probably had no clue of the sensitivity of the information it contained — now they do!
	wayne January 2nd, 2010 at 1:46 am OK boys and girls. Here we go. I have been in the Intel and Cyber world for over 30 years. The first question I have is WHY there is ANY information on the Laptop what so ever. One can use an 8 Gig Solid State drive which only contains the OS (Operating Systems for you lay persons) and can be rebuilt every time it is rebooted thus removing any data which may have been placed on the hard drive. For those of you who are thinking way to hard at this point, the usable area of the hard drive can be formatted to a non-recoverable state within a short period of time once the computer is shutdown using a simple script and a program added to the boot sector of the drive. As most of you are very aware, there is a virtual world for computing using VMware or Citrix servers which virtualizes all the data and applications in a central location and does not require the data to be resident on the Laptop which should be setup as a DUMB terminal ONLY.
	wayne January 2nd, 2010 at 1:46 am The communications can be encrypted at the highest levels and still be available almost real-time or even from a PDA Smartphone. Gee wiz people this is not a novel concept in security and has been around for about 10+ year now. If a person is placed into a situation where they are required to have classified data on their computer then is should damn well be encrypted and only contain specifically what is needed and not contain, say a list of MI5 operative working in Afghanistan or Iran.
	Marty Short January 4th, 2010 at 6:16 pm It’s all mental masturbation guys. The lap tops contain dis-information. That’s standard ops and you all know that. Actually a waste of funds these days.