Germany’s Fragile National Security

When it comes to countries with the strongest defense sector, Bundeswehr, the unified armed forces of Germany, ranks amongst the top 20. Nevertheless, a technological security loophole in March almost exposed the German military to national security threats of the highest grade.

A used laptop sold on eBay consisted of the proof of German military’s failure at protecting its national security and defense strategy. With a mere 128 MB of functioning memory, the laptop held the most confidential information — without any digital security protecting it — the manual and schematics of a missile system currently used by the German air force.

The user manual and schematics were of a software for the surface-to-air missile system, the Ozelot. The German air force still uses it for protecting the ground troops from getting bombed via ground attack or aerial attacks carried out via helicopters. Bundeswehr, refrained from disclosing the number of Ozelot currently in use by the country’s air force.

The reported laptop was probably part of the German military once and was only decommissioned years ago. Nevertheless, technology isn’t as simple and the hard drive of the laptop — when it was sold — was still holding on to some crucial information about a critical German military weapon system that is still in use. More than unsafe, the defense ministry called the event ‘embarrassing’.

All it took was a decades old, 11-pound, Pentium III processor laptop with a negligible memory to expose one of the finest defense forces in the world to national security threats. Coincidently the purchase was made by a German cybersecurity firm, G Data CyberDefense, who bought it out of curiosity of finding something interesting to dig into.

Nadine Krüger, a German defense ministry spokeswoman said that it was still unclear how the event took place, as the defense forces have a strict set of security rules concerning the divestment of redundant IT equipment. The availability of the laptop is also questionable because usually the army surplus in Germany makes it out in the market through a state-owned company called VEBEG. Therefore, the ministry began investigating how the laptop ended up on sale on eBay with such confidential data, lying in it without password protection or encryption.

This isn’t the first case of its kind, in fact, only last year a Bavarian forest ranger came across classified manual of a rocket artillery unit called “Mars”. He found the data on one of the four laptops he bought from eBay. Meanwhile, the reseller claims to have sold 16 more of its kind. Technology brings in as much vulnerability to a critical infrastructure like the military, as much constructive productivity and progressiveness it is designed to offer.