Articles tagged with: theft

Ever lost a memory stick? Not to worry - the men and women charged with defending our freedoms have lost 131 of them since 2004, not to mention the 658 Ministry of Defence laptops that have also gone walkies.

The figures were uncovered by the Lib Dems in a parliamentary question to the Government, which also revealed that five pieces of the missing MoD kit held information classified as "secret". Whoops!

The ability to brick stolen mobiles by blocking their IMEI numbers has made expensive phones much less attractive to thieves. Sadly, laptops are still high on their shopping lists, with often little more than a car window between them and a lucrative snatch. Now, though, Intel's doing something about it. It's announced its Anti-Theft Technology - or ATT - initiative that could effectively do for the laptop what IMEI blocking has done for mobiles.

A total of 56 laptops were stolen from government departments in 2007, according to answers put to ministers in the House of Commons. 

11 laptops were stolen from local government departments in 2007, according to Department for Communities and Local Government and Parliamentary Under-Secretary Parmjit Dhanda. Worth around £800 each, the laptops were all encrypted to CESG standards – unlike the three completely unencrypted MoD laptops that have been stolen since 2005.

HM Revenue and Customs, on the other hand, reported 45 of its laptops stolen between 1 January and 28 November 2007 – 16 went missing during a break-in at an HMRC office.

In a written answer to a question put to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 4 December 2007, Financial Secretary for HM Treasury Jane Kennedy stated the cost of replacement HMRC laptops was approximately £43,000, but would not comment on what data the laptops contained.

[They Work For You]

The laptop stolen last week in Birmingham wasn’t the first that the MoD has lost, Defence Minister Des Brown has admitted – two other laptops containing encrypted data have gone missing since 2005.

In a debate in the House of Commons today, Brown stated that this latest discovery was made during an internal investigation into the wider security issues raised by this latest theft. It turns out that a Royal Navy laptop was stolen from a car in Manchester in October 2006, and an Army recruiting laptop, containing details of about 500 individuals, was stolen from a careers office in Edinburgh in December 2005.

The police have launched an inquiry after a Ministry of Defence laptop containing unencrypted details of 600,000 applicants to the armed forces was stolen. According to a report by BBC News, the theft took place in Edgbaston, Birmingham after a junior Royal Navy officer left the laptop in his car overnight on Wednesday 9 January.

"The stolen laptop contained personal information relating to some 600,000 people who have either expressed an interest in, or have joined, the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force," reads a statement on the MOD’s website.

Mozilla has updated the Firefox browser in order to fix three major vulnerabilities, which are described as “high impact” – the second most serious of four security categories. One of the vulnerabilities makes it possible to extract contact details from a Google Mail account, while three stability bugs could enable a hacker to take advantage of a memory crash and run an exploit. The update is known as Firefox 2.0.0.10 and automatic updates should have been sent to your Firefox browser. For more information, go to Mozilla’s website.

[Mozilla]

The personal data of hundreds of people runs the risk of being exposed following the left of a laptop from an HM Revenue and Customs worker, according to BBC News.

The laptop, used by a staff member for tax auditing, was stolen from the boot of an HMRC car last month. HMRC has apologised for the breach and stated that the data on the laptop had been stored securely - which is surprising (although fortunate), considering other high profile laptop thefts.

An HMRC spokesman said: that information was stored on the laptop using "a complex password and top level encryption".

[BBC News]