Galactic Blunder: NASA Sells PCs Containing Sensitive Data
Galactic Blunder: NASA Sells PCs Containing Sensitive Data
Posted 12/10/2010 at 7:50am
| by Paul Lilly
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Someone over at NASA forgot to hit the delete key before getting rid of several computers and hard drives -- never mind giving things a thorough scrubbing by zeroing-filling the drives, which by itself still isn't up to government standards -- leaving sensitive data intact, MSNBC reports.
"Our review found serious breaches in NASA's IT security practices that could lead to the improper release of sensitive information related to the Space Shuttle and other NASA programs," NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said in a statement. "NASA needs to take coordinated and forceful actions to address this problem."
NASA was ridding itself of computer gear as part of a plan to end the Space Shuttle program, but somewhere along the line things went very wrong. An audit revealed that 14 computers from the Kennedy Space Center hadn't been properly scrubbed. Ten of those machines made it to the public, while several hard drives came up missing from Kennedy and the Langley Research Center, a few of which were found in a dumpster.
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violian
December 10, 2010 at 11:51am
No pun intended, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that selling your computer with your harddrive is not such a good idea. I mean, if I bought a computer from NASA, I'd be tempted to scan the harddrive. You could never truly format a spinning-platter HDD. Couldn't they have just sold the computers without the HDD's? HDD's are dirt cheap these days so it shouldn't have affected the price much.
timmyw
December 10, 2010 at 9:59am
It is just bad practice not to scrub everything from a hard drive before disposing of it.
I think they were more worried about IP information revealing NASA'a internal network structure and the like than anything to do with some foreign government getting a hold of decades old space shuttle technology.
Maybe they could find the guy who erased the original moon landing videos and bring him out of retirement.
sfltrack
December 10, 2010 at 9:39am
"Besides what is so secretive about an old out of date, space shuttle"
How about NSA satellite info or the new DOD gps satellites? Maby
there is a full account about the Global warming BS campaign that was forced
on NASA.
growler
December 10, 2010 at 8:35am
What's the big deal? If anyone got those computes, more than likely they don't know how to access those documents and if they do they don't know the terminology to understand what they mean...Besides what is so secretive about an old out of date, space shuttle...
praetor_alpha
December 10, 2010 at 10:36am
They're petrified of it being used as a North Korean nuclear delivery mechanism.
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