TSA Laptops With Hazmat Driver Info Stolen

October 20, 2007

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The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is in hot water again for losing sensitive data, and this time around it has national security implications: Two laptops were reportedly stolen from a TSA contractor that contained personal information about commercial drivers who transport hazardous materials across the U.S.

TSA reportedly revealed the theft in an October 12 letter to lawmakers. The computers, which are those of TSA contractor Integrated Biometric Technology for the TSA’s Hazardous Materials Endorsement Threat Assessment program — which gathers security-clearance information on hazmat drivers — include personal data such as names, addresses, birthdates, commercial driver’s license numbers, and some Social Security numbers of nearly 4,000 people, according to an AP report.

After the theft, TSA reportedly ordered the contractor to encrypt all hard drives for the program. “But it’s embarrassing that the agency we go to do deal with security threats waited until after these disasters to deploy basic measures,” says Paul Kocher, president and chief scientist of Cryptography Research. “There seems to be a priority problem in the TSA… [it's not just about] empty toothpaste tubes.”

Details about the actual theft are sketchy so far, with Integrated Biometric Technology first reporting data had been deleted from the laptops prior to the theft, but later it was discovered that the data hadn’t been properly wiped from the drives after all.

“So far, the circumstances are sort of suspicious,” says Richard Stiennon, chief marketing officer for Fortinet. “There was one computer, and ‘we erased the data,’ there were two computers, and ‘oops, the data wasn’t erased well.’ There’s a lot more on the backend of the story.”

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