Alemania: Bundeswehr vende notebook con secretos militares

Bundeswehr sold laptop with secret data

Der Spiegel





Laptop given away, data deletion forgotten: The Bundeswehr sold a computer with sensitive files according to a media report. The Ministry of Defense weighed down.

The Bundeswehr is said to have sold a used laptop on whose hard drive confidential information was. It concerns the operating instructions for the rocket launcher "Mars" classified as "classified information - only for official use". This reports the "Süddeutsche Zeitung".

Apparently the hard drive was not deleted before the sale. The Department of Defense told the newspaper that the description of the missile launcher "could not lead to any critical findings." If material is marked as "classified - for official use only", it is subject to the lowest level of secrecy.

According to the report, the purchaser, an Upper Bavarian forester, bought four used laptops from the collecting society of the federal government (Vebeg) in 2018. On one of them was therefore still the operating system installed, by typing in the last user name as a password it could be unlocked. In March, he reported his find to the ministry.

At least one more case

This explained the "South German", it was the utilization of IT equipment to the complaint of the forester "a close scrutiny" and found that in 2016 another calculator with unerelöschter hard drive was sold through the collecting society. Whether it also had been confidential data, can no longer be determined.

According to the newspaper, the ministry initiated a repurchase of the equipment via the Vebeg. The forester returned one, but three were still in possession. The investigation of the hard disks by the journalists had also shown that other classified as secret documents that had previously been deleted, "could easily be restored." In addition, had on one of the computers photos of current or former members of the Bundeswehr.