Lost in the Year 208 AD: The Shadow of Marine One, the Missing Blueprint and the Drifting Crisis

Lost in the Year 208 AD: The Shadow of Marine One, the Missing Blueprint and the Drifting Crisis

In 2008, classified blueprints for Marine One, the helicopter used by the President of the United States, were unknowingly passed into the dark. The story takes place at a defense contractor in Bethesda, Maryland. An employee had saved the data on his home PC, and it spread around the world via a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing network. Traces of it were found on a computer with an IP address as far away as Iran.

The incident was made public on March 2, 2009, by an article in Computerworld. The shocking development of national secrets being entangled in a P2P web forced the US Department of Defense to review its information management system. The use of P2P networks by the military industry and government agencies was severely questioned, triggering calls for tighter regulations on confidentiality.

Marine One is a presidential aircraft modified from the Sikorsky VH-3D. The leak of its blueprints suggests more than a mere leak of information. It was a sign that shook the very foundations of national security. In 2024, the VH-92A will be deployed, and the VH-3D will quietly end its service.

Related Information
- Incident: Published in Computerworld on March 2, 2009
- Cause: Employees of a Bethesda, Maryland military industrial company used a P2P network to leak sensitive data
- Impact: Discovered on computers with Iranian IP addresses, posing a national security vulnerability
- Countermeasure: U.S. Department of Defense tightened restrictions on use of P2P networks
- Successor: Deployment of the new VH-92A presidential helicopter is scheduled to be completed in 2024.