Iranian cybercriminal shares Marine One specs on Gnutella

A security company finds schematics for the president’s personal helicopter circulating on the Gnutella file-sharing network—hosted by a suspected Iranian cybercriminal. Though the source of the leak has not been identified, several of the documents appear to relate to bids for a cockpit upgrade contract awarded in 2006.

A data security company in Pennsylvania this weekend confirmed that sensitive schematics for the Sikorsky VH-60N helicopter—better known by the call sign “Marine One” when used as personal transport for the President of the United States—had been leaked over the Gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing network, and appeared to be in the possession of a probable cybercriminal in Iran.

The documents—which included the complete avionics package for the VH-60N, describing its electronic systems in detail—were first discovered floating around P2P networks last fall by analysts at Tiversa, a company that specializes in detecting P2P data leaks. The documents are believed to have originated on the network of an unnamed defense contractor based in Bethesda, MD, where an employee had installed a file-sharing client configured to share the contents of the hard drive indiscriminately.

Read more: arstechnica.com