Mysterious Unsolicited Government Laptops Now Under Investigation

In the past week unsolicited HP and Compaq (another HP brand) laptops have been showing up at various US Governement agencies, with about 5 laptops arriving at each location in West Virginia, Vermont, Wyoming, and Washington.

Now it has recently been learned that the gesture in at least three of those cases were made by an unscrupulous source using stolen credit cards.

The laptops were never used and in some cases were sent to local officials for investigation. While it appears they were delivered directly from HP some local law enforcement agencies are worried that malicious spyware may have been installed on the machines, spyware that in turn could be used to steal state secrets. [via Engadget]