Thrift-store MP3 Player Exposes Data on U.S. Soldiers and Equipment in AfghanistanJanuary 26, 2009

 

U.S. military has some of the world's most stringent controls for protecting proprietary information about its operations and weapons systems. But it also seems to have an Achilles' heel: small gadgets like flash drives and MP3 players.

A New Zealand man recently visiting the United States purchased an MP3 music player from a thrift shop in Oklahoma and found that it contained 60 U.S. military files. The music player held private information about troops, including their social security numbers and even divulged which female soldiers were pregnant. The device also contained details of equipment deployed to bases in Afghanistan and a mission briefing, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle. Many of the file names themselves displayed words like "Bagram," a major base in Afghanistan.

This comes just a few years after similar breaches occurred in Afghanistan in 2006. At that time, U.S. investigators bought stolen flash drives that contained sensitive military data from shops right outside the Bagram base. Some of the information on those drives included lists of troops who had completed nuclear, chemical and biological warfare training.

The most recent breach did not contain any information that would compromise national security, experts say. "This is just slack administrative procedures which are indeed a cause of embarrassment," said Peter Cozens, director of Victoria University of Wellington’s Strategic Studies Department, according to the article.