Ebayer sells stolen government computers
An IT engineer from Fareham, Hampshire, Andrew Woffindin, was sentenced to jail for 15 months this week after being on trial for stealing about ?58,000 of kit from the National Air Traffic Control Centre, and selling it on Ebay.
Woffindin used the money to pay off debt that was accumulated on his wife?s credit card.
The presiding judge of the Portsmouth crown court, Judge Peter Henry, described Woffindin as a national security threat, due to the fact that some of the base computers had military and commercial flight data on them.
The defence argued that Woffindin had wiped all sensitive information off of the computers, but the judge dismissed the argument after he learned that Woffindin did not have the proper skills to be able to effectively clean the computers.
Chief executive of hardware at Stonewood Group, Chris McIntosh, said that national security was likely not threatened by Woffindin due to the fact that it should have been heavily encrypted by CESG approved products.
Thus, the recipients of the stolen computers would have needed the encryption key in order to be able to access the information.
McIntosh added that the only way there may have been a security risk is if Woffindin had been able to sell the encryption keys alongside the laptops.
