Spy Used Palm to Leak Secrets

Robert Hanssen, the man recently arrested in the U.S. for spying for Russia, used a Palm handheld to transfer top secret information. According to the The Register, Hanssen entered his meetings with the Russians into his Palm. He also got tired of going to remote places to drop off his stolen materials and asked his Russian handlers if they would let him use a Palm VII so he could transfer the secrets wirelessly.

Hanssen wrote to his handlers, "We do need a better form of secure communication -- faster. The VII version comes with wireless internet capability built in. It can allow the rapid transmission of encrypted messages, which if used on an infrequent basis, could be quite effective in preventing confusions if the existence [sic] of the accounts could be appropriately hidden as well as the existance [sic] of the devices themselves. Such a device might even serve for rapid transmittal of substantial material in digital form." The Russians weren't interested.

He used his Palm to schedule meetings with the Russians. A covert search of Hanssen's Palm III before he was arrested turned up an entry of the secret Sunday night appointment in his date book..

In his office was an 8 MB Flash memory card with incriminating copies of some of the files he had exchanged with Russian intelligence.

Hanssen is accused of betraying some of the US intelligence community's most closely-held secrets to the KGB, and its successor agency the SVR, over a fifteen year period, in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.