Sensitive Military Data Was Unexpectedly Found on an Old

The incident happened a few days ago when an old German military payroll laptop for sale on eBay for just 90 euros accidentally exposed a bunch of sensitive data from the organization. More rarely, this laptop was acquired by a company called G Data specializing in cybersecurity, and they reported the whole incident in a blog post on March 16.

This is an older Roda-branded computer, with only 128MB of RAM, running on Windows 2000 and Intel Pentium III processor. However, it still works relatively well, and when digging into the laptop's hard drive, the G Data team found a range of sensitive information, including military secrets.

The laptop was later identified as being derived from Bundeswehr - a unit of the German army. It still contains an almost intact administrator program called MODIS, already entered the username 'GUEST'. The G Data team then tried to enter the password as 'Guest' as well, and strangely they were able to log into the system - an extremely loose way of setting the password. The data found included details about a tank equipped with an air defense system called Ocelot. Additional information about the diagram, its maintenance, and operation is also available, along with a number of other military data, including many 'important' labeling documents.

Fortunately, most of the data found on the laptop did not pose any significant security risks, and was immediately handed over to the German military by G Data.

According to a recent study by the University of Hertfordshire, it was found that out of the 100 old phones purchased on eBay between January and June 2018, up to 17% still contained data. Personal data of the previous owner has not been completely removed.