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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the use-it-for-target-practice dept.

The Naval Surface Warfare Center at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico has—literally—tons of IT hardware and equipment used for classified programs that need to be destroyed by the most secure and irreversible means.

While White Sands Missile Range is an Army facility, NAVSEA researchers have a detachment there working on "land-based weapons system testing, directed energy weapons testing"—lasers—"and research rocket launch support," according to their webpage. Those researchers have on hand some 4,000 pounds of IT equipment, including magnetic, optical and solid-state storage devices with highly sensitive, classified data.

The center issued a solicitation for destruction services that specifically calls for all designated equipment to be burned "to ash."

The information stored on these devices is highly sensitive, as evidenced by the physical security requirements set forth in the solicitation. The incineration facility must have "at the minimum, secure entry, 24-hour armed guards and 24/7 camera surveillance with recordable date and time capabilities."

https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/02/navy-needs-2-tons-storage-devices-burned-ash/154629/


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:49PM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:49PM (#800132) Journal

    Burned, to ash, eh? 24/7 armed guards? That's some highly melodramatic security theater alrighty. What a waste of taxpayer money.

    To wit, if the data on those hard drives and other storage is so precious, how did it all end up collected together like that? Some of that must have sat in storage for months, if not years. Plenty of time for spies to break in and make off with the data. Was it guarded 24/7 that whole time? Probably not. No doubt it was on the base, and that is considered secure. Were they erased and overwritten before going to this collection place? If not, why the f*** not? If they were, then this is merely a trash disposal problem.

    And remember, these are the boys who rationalize the use of Windows as more secure than Linux in the following way: Windows is made by an American company, Microsoft, while Linux was built by a bunch of foreigners. Those foreigners might have put all kinds of backdoors, booby traps, spyware, and so forth in the code, while the American citizens who programmed Windows can be trusted.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:38PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:38PM (#800180)

    You forgot one extra detail : If it was such important data, then the drives/CDs must have been encrypted.

    It's White Sands. They know heat and radiation well. Both destroy data, and it doesn't take a lot of either to make it impossible to recover and decrypt data.

    Most high-tech solution: Ship to your friendly local accelerator, install in the beam dump [web.cern.ch]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:12PM (#800257)

    Windows is made by an American company, Microsoft, while Linux was built by a bunch of foreigners.

    You must be describing Winders 3.1 which were built back in the day by the good folks of the US of A citizenry. Wintrubbles versions of late are all built by H1-B non-citizens who can hardly code their way out of a ham sandwich, but can lie on resumes and immigration forms. Why, even the CEO...