Cabinet data on stolen BlackBerry
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
A BlackBerry sold by a homeless man to a student contains the personal details of cabinet ministers, top civil servants and police officers. The police believe it was stolen from a car and that they have traced the owner, so far they believe the device was stolen in September of 2006.
The student Darryl Curtis said it held hundreds of phone numbers, with data which led him to think it belonged to an ex-Sheffield council chief.
After paying £150 for the device, Mr Curtis discovered it held the numbers for Mr Balls, the Children’s Secretary, and the Foreign Secretary Mr Miliband, along with ex-deputy prime minister John Prescott.
Mr Blair’s number was not stored on the device. However, Mr Curtis said he found the National Insurance number, home address and computer passwords of a former chief executive of Sheffield City Council.
Public fears about the security of data held by public bodies have been heightened by a series of high-profile cases involving government departments and hospitals.
Had GadgetTrak Mobile Security been installed on this device, the government could have tracked the device as well as remotely wiped this sensitive information from it. According The Open Security Foundation, 32% of all data breaches are the result of a lost or stolen mobile device.
Source: BBC
