Here are the titles of some articles I’ve come across lately. I haven’t included the full content of the articles but I think that, just based on the titles, you’ll see why I’m a bit concerned…
“Internet Flaw Could Let Hackers Take Over The Web” - I think that if this is true they might not want to detail how this could actually happen - which they did. Yeah, the article spoke very specifically about exactly what the flaw was and how to exploit it. Cool, huh?
“Airports Vulnerable to Attack” - While I suspect we all agree that yes, there are still some vulnerabilities that reality and budget constrains won’t allow us to directly address but this article explained how our airports were vulnerable and how bad guys could exploit these vulnerabilites.
“Billions More Needed to Secure U.S. Embassies” - Well then, please tell me what we need to spend this money on exactly and further I would like to know how not having these things can immediately put these embassies at risk. And while you’re at it go ahead and tell me which embassies are the most vulnerable so I don’t waste my time trying to blow up the wrong one. Anybody want to guess if the article actually did this?
“Research Reveals Patterns of Terrorist Preparation” - While, as a citizen, I am very happy that our law enforcement agencies have found patterns that may tip them off to terrorist activities, I am not real happy that we told the terrorists this. Seems to me that Terry Terrorist might begin to change his/her tactics and prepare for their activities in a whole new way thereby negating the intelligence advantage we had until this article came out.
Folks, I’m no arbiter of what is right or wrong to put into print and I have no educational background to argure the public’s “right to know” but as an OPSEC Professional it just seems to me that we are making waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much sensitive information available. For those of you out there actively practicing OPSEC, this is just one of the reasons you need to do Open Source searches on your own organization. It’s always good to know what the bad guy already knows about you - then you can focus your protection efforts on what is not known and you can also be proactive about dealing with what is known about your organization, mission or specific activities.
Keep the Faith!
Revelator
Bring The Noise - Public Enemy