Government lied about data left in pub car park

THE UK GOVERNMENT needs to get "realistic" and "stop making things up" says computer insecurity tech-spert, Jacques Erasmus from Prevx, telling the INQUIRER that a data stick lost by a government employee was unencrypted.

Claiming the memory stick found in the car park of a Staffordshire pub had a lot more on it than just a few user names and passwords, as the government had suggested, Erasmus noted it actually contained "really valuable information" as well as a fairly recent source code.

Spinners for the Department for Work and Pensions reckoned the security software and passwords on the data stick were protected "using an industry standard technique which is difficult to break" and that a source code and step-by-step guide to the system provided in a text file were old and of "low risk".

But the stick was "totally unencrypted and all the data was totally readable " according to Erasmus who reckoned it would have been relatively easy for someone in possession of it to access the Government Gateway site and redirect tax money into a personal bank account, for instance.

Erasmus said the government was deliberately trying to "play down" the seriousness of the incident because the memory stick had been found and handed in, meaning the potential damage was limited. In other circumstances, however, the information on the data stick, and especially the source code, could have handed 'invaluable' information to people interested in hoarding precious personal details or even defrauding the government.

On top of giving away the system blueprint, the stick was also jam packed with personal data including people’s names, addresses, salaries, individual tax liabilities and even the National Insurance numbers of a group of taxpayers.

Atos Origen, the computer management firm whose 29 year old employee, Daniel Harrington, lost the memory stick is apparently taking the issue “very seriously”, as one would expect from a firm on a £46.7million government contract.

Erasmus urged that the government now take matters a little more seriously too, to "get to the bottom of things" and ensuring it didn’t happen again. µ

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