Flash drives are wonderful things. I don’t have one myself, but use other people’s flash drives to transfer files here and there. It’s a hell of a lot quicker than just about anything else. Apparently some people in the US Military also find them useful. Unfortunately, an almost full 1GB flash drive was apparently lost and later sold at an Afghani bazaar outside a US air base, the LA Times reports. Shit.
The flash memory drive, which a teenager sold for $40, holds scores of military documents marked “secret,” describing intelligence-gathering methods and information — including escape routes into Pakistan and the location of a suspected safe house there, and the payment of $50 bounties for each Taliban or Al Qaeda fighter apprehended based on the source’s intelligence.
The documents appear to be authentic, but the accuracy of the information they contain could not be independently verified.
On its face, the information seems to jeopardize the safety of intelligence sources working secretly for U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, which would constitute a serious breach of security.
The names of secret operatives, the names of their families, diagrams, documents on base security, photographs of informants, cell phone numbers, informant pay scales…
Information used to be encrypted. Remember that whole Enigma thing? The article states that most of the documents were “neither locked nor encrypted” holy shit.
I’ve read articles as recently as last month on how there are still enigma codes being broken; now that’s one hell of a complex cipher. Passwords on documents can be broken easily, encryption is another thing. The article states that there were some password protected documents, but most of them weren’t fucking encrypted?!
Now, this could be a hoax with fake info on the drives, but if it isn’t, Chroist.