New South Wales' deputy Privacy Commissioner has chastised RailCorp for selling USB flash drives sold at auction without deleting sensitive user information.
Some of the USB drives picked up at the auction of lost passenger equipment in September contained troves of personal data including resumes, tax returns, photos and documents.
Paul Ducklin, chief technology officer at Sophos bought about 70 USBs at the September auction and uncovered personal data still stored on the devices.
"I'm sure if I was a thief that I could do really well," Ducklin said.
"We revealed a good deal of personal information about many of the people who lost the USBs, about their families, friends and colleagues."
But the keys were sold en masse without any attempt to wipe storage data.
It is believed RailCorp wiped clean lost laptops also sold at auction.
NSW deputy Privacy Commissioner John McAteer told SCMagazine Australia that the government organisation should have cleaned the USBs prior to selling in order to follow best practice.
The state-owned corporation is not bound by the same strict privacy guidelines to which other institutions must adhere but that was no excuse, McAteer said.
"By selling the information on the USBs they are deemed to be using it and they should delete the information."
"They should not disclose the data without the consent of the person the data relates to."
RailCorp did not immediately respond when asked if it considered whether selling the devices without wiping stored data could be a breach of privacy.
Information galore
Sophos' Ducklin ran a simple script on the flash drives to reveal the personal data.
None of the devices were encrypted.
The "cursory analysis" did not examine deleted information still present on the recycle bin folders on the keys nor attempted to recover data that users had tried to erase.
Some 66 percent of the 57 functional devices bought by Ducklin were infected with malware.
Most targeted the flash drives' autorun files, particularly on Windows machines. However, seven USBs contained infections and were previously used on Mac computers.
Ducklin was shocked when the auction price was nearly twice the average retail value of the USBs.
The news comes on the heels of reports last month that revealed the Department of Defence launched an investigation when a USB owned by a senior Australian military official went missing in Kuwait.
and documents have been found on USB keys lost on Sydney trains and
sold to the public at a CityRail auction.
Paul Ducklin, chief technology officer at Sophos bought 70 USBs at the
September auction and uncovered personal data still stored on the
devices.
"I'm sure if I was a thief that I could do really well," Ducklin said.
The keys, sold without any attempt to wipe storage data, were auctioned
by bucket loads.
A simple script run by Ducklin on the keys revealed none of the devices
were encrypted.
The "cursory analysis" did not examine deleted information still present on the recycle bin folders on the keys nor attempted to recover data that users had tried to erase.
RailCorp could not immediately respond when asked if it had considered
that selling the devices without wiping stored data could easily expose
sensitive data.
The auction could be seen as a veritable bazaar for data theives. In xxx Defence launched an investigation when a USB owned by a senior Australian military official went missing in Kuwait xxx.
Ducklin was shocked when the auction price was nearly twice the average
retail value of the USBs.
Laptops believed wiped clean of data before being auctioned also met or
exceeded retail value, Ducklin said.
But even deleted information could be easily recovered using tools readily available online.
"We revealed a good deal of personal information about many of the people who lost the USBs, about their families, friends and colleagues," Ducklin said.
The NSW Privacy office has been contacted for comment.
Malware
A whopping 66 per cent of the 57 functional devices bought by Ducklin were infected with malware.
Malware targeting autorun files was the most common infection. All malware targeted Windows machines although seven USBs contained infections and were previously used on Mac computers.
All of the USBs contained a single FAT volume.
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