"Military Device Containing Thousands of Peoples' Biometric Data Reportedly Sold on eBay"
Near Kandahar, Afghanistan, the US military used one of its Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit (SEEK II) devices for the final time more than a decade ago. The technology, a bulky black rectangle used to scan fingerprints and irises, was deactivated and put away until August 2022, when German security researcher Matthias Marx purchased the device for $68 on eBay. Marx had inadvertently purchased sensitive, identifiable information about thousands of people for a low price. The biometric fingerprint and iris scans of 2,632 individuals were accompanied by names, nationalities, photographs, and descriptions. According to a report from The New York Times (NYT), most of the information contained by the purchased SEEK II device was data collected on terrorists and wanted individuals identified by the US military. However, others were Middle Eastern citizens who had been stopped at checkpoints or even those who had provided support for the US government. This information could be used to trace down an individual, making the device and its associated data more hazardous if they fell into the wrong hands. For example, the Taliban could find and punish those who worked with US forces in the region. Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Department of Defense (DOD) press secretary, told NYT that the department could neither confirm the accuracy of the data nor comment on it. Ryder added that the equipment should be returned to the military and gave NYT an address to return the device. Marx and his colleagues at the self-described largest hacker organization in Europe, the Chaos Computer Club, purchased the SEEK II device and five other biometric capture devices from eBay. The group intended to examine the devices for any flaws. Even though Marx had set out from the start to evaluate the risk connected with biometric devices, he was nonetheless startled by the magnitude of his findings. This article continues to discuss the purchase of the SEEK II device from eBay, the information found on its memory card, and the potential consequences that can arise if this information were to get into the wrong hands.