Details of Obama's chopper leaked via P2P software?

Filed Under: Data loss, Podcast

Marine One helicopter
The US Presidential helicopter, known as "Marine One", must be one of the most highly secured aircraft in the world.

Often seen on the White House lawn, "Marine One" always flies alongside a group of identical helicopters which act as decoys in case of an attack.

There will, therefore, be serious questions asked following the reported security breach that leaked engineering and communications information about the "Marine One" helicopter onto a peer-to-peer file-sharing network. According to reports, sensitive blueprints regarding the chopper's avionics and communications system were found on an IP address located in Tehran.

There has been speculation that a defence contractor might have installed P2P software onto their PC, which then shared the sensitive files across the internet for anyone to download.

Regular visitors to the Sophos website will probably know that there have been countless incidents of sensitive information leaking into the public domain through peer-to-peer file-sharing software. It seems some still haven't learnt the lesson.

A Sophos survey found that uncontrolled applications are causing serious concern for system administrators. For example, 86.5% of respondents said they want the opportunity to block P2P applications, with 79% indicating that blocking is essential.


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About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.