A former U.S. military contractor has pleaded guilty to identity theft after he was accused of selling names and Social Security numbers of 17,000 military employees, the U.S. Department of Justice has said.
Randal Craig admitted selling data contained in military files to a person he believed to represent a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas and the FBI.
On Feb. 6, Craig met with a contact at Houston airport to discuss the sale of a USB drive containing the information he had obtained. Craig reportedly sold the thumb drive for $500.
The case once again highlights the risks associated with unauthorized portable media on the network - and how easy it is for rogue operators to help themselves to highly confidential information.
Craig now faces a maximum of five years in prison.
The UK Government has confirmed that the country’s Ministry of Defence has “lost” a total of 121 USB drives since 2004, 87 of them containing sensitive information. The admission came after Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather along with Conservative MPs Liam Fox and Mark Hoban posed parliamentary questions on the matter in the Commons.
The MoD also admitted losing three PDAs with a further nine being stolen.
According to new research announced by Trend Micro, the risk of data leakage is now ranked second only to viruses in terms of perceived threat. Over 160,000 organizations across the US, UK, Germany and Japan were questioned - and the research uncovered that 46 per cent of respondents did not have a policy in place designed to protect their proprietary data. Companies in Germany and Japan are more likely than their UK counterparts to implement data leak prevention policies.
Only six per cent of end users admitted to having leaked company information, while 16 per cent believed that other employees caused data leaks.
