It really takes the fun out of espionage when you sell military secrets on eBay

The University of Glamorgan has been dabbling in international spying recently. With the help of two other universities across the globe they decided to buy some hard drives.

Stating eBay, computer auctions and computer fairs as their sources the University revealed that they had managed to obtain both military and commercial secrets. It appears that important people do not seem to realise that that delete button may not do that.

It’s the staple of a good crime drama to have computer whizzes/nerds (I prefer the former but I know how small minded some people can be) searching the hard drives of suspects for that hidden stash of incriminating evidence, so why do big companies find it so hard to realise?

Putting ‘Destroy hard drive’ into Google gives you 1,880,000 results with pages ranging from Wikihow’s informative 7 steps to more tongue in cheek methods (boydcreative.net creatively suggests military thermite would do the job – unfortunately neglecting to mention where you might obtain some). The BBC and Which? Magazine have got in on the act as well, in an article you can see here.

However it seems that even with all this information around companies still want to make a quick buck by selling their computers to the public. Some other companies make a quick buck with a $50 billion currency exchange – thanks to their carelessness you could pinpoint the US consultant who put it through.

It’s not only businesses that are careless with their data though. The stereotypically efficient German’s decided to sell a hard drive in France – neglecting to properly delete security records and network data.

With this information it seems that James Bond and his contemporaries might soon find themselves out of a job. Idiocy and carelessness may yet cause more job redundancies…

Words: Phil Hurst
http://philhurst.wordpress.com