Man buys used iPod, gets 60 pages of sensitive military data

After purchasing a used iPod, a New Zealand resident found that it wasn't much use for rocking out. Instead of playing MP3s, the gadget contained 60 pages of data on US military personnel, mission briefings, and equipment deployment.

By David Chartier

Flickr user larimdame

The buzz from scoring an iPod for $15 undoubtedly wore off quickly for one New Zealand man. Instead of a working MP3 player that could be loaded up with tunes, Chris Ogle found a broken iPod filled with 60 pages of US military data and personally identifying information.

Update: Sleuthy Arsians pointed out that the MP3 player in this story is in fact not an iPod. The specific manufacturer and model is not known, but judging from CNN's video coverage and interview, the MP3 player could very well be a DNT MP3 Fun200 (PDF link).

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The files Ogle found on the MP3 player contain the names and personal details of US soldiers, including some who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are no details on exactly how many personal records are contained within the documents (most of which date back to 2005), but they also have information on mission briefings and equipment deployment.

This incident is probably not the worst breach of military data in recent memory. About a year ago, a UK military recruitment officer's notebook containing over 600,000 personally identifying, unencrypted records was stolen from his car. In 2007, the US military began clamping down on "milbloggers" who may have inadvertently been giving away too much information to the enemy by posting about day-to-day base operations on increasingly popular public blogs. Of course, there is also Gary McKinnon, who is responsible for the "biggest military hack of all time." While McKinnon wasn't exactly snooping for the bad guys, he did manage to break into various systems across the US Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA, Pentagon, and Department of Defense in search for proof that aliens exist.

Still, Ogle's situation is a bit bizarre in that no one knows how or why this sensitive information was stored on an iPod, or how that MP3 player slipped out to a used hardware vendor. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), some of the phone numbers from the MP3 player's records still work, and the identified individuals indeed picked up on the other end.

"The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be [seeing]," Mr Ogle told ABC. He says he will hand the player over to the US Defense Department should it ever ask.