A British Army Officer, a veteran of Afghanistan, was last night at the centre of an investigation after a laptop he dumped in a skip was found to contain a whole host of top secret files.
The officer claims he wiped all information from the laptop, and purposefully damaged the unit to ensure that it couldn’t be used, before placing it in the skip, to be sent to landfill.
The laptop was then recovered and sold on eBay to an IT Engineer who was stunned to find the documents on the hard drive.
Although the laptop itself was unusable, the hard drive remained intact, meaning that anyone that happened upon the unit could have accessed the information within, potentially risking identity fraud and even loss of life.
The information contained within the hard drive included:
– police command posts in a Helmand town
– photos, names and other personal details, of Afghan National Police and Army volunteers
– the Afghan National Police tactical handbook
None of the files saved on the hard drive were encrypted or requiring a password for access.
The IT engineer, when realising the confidential nature of the contents of the hard drive, many of which were classed as secret or restricted, handed it in to officials.
This incident highlights the need to use effective technology to securely wipe hard drives, and that data can be recovered even from damaged equipment.