this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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Operations Security (OPSEC)

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Welcome to the first operations security (OPSEC) community on Lemmy!

This is a space dedicated to discussing, sharing, and learning about operational security practices. Whether you are a business owner, a cybersecurity expert, or just a regular person, you can always benefit from a little extra OPSEC in your life.


Community Guidelines

As we belong to Lemmy.zip all of their guidelines apply on top of ours.

  1. Stay on topic:

    • Keep discussions related to OPSEC only
    • If your post is about this community instead of OPSEC prepend [META] to the title
  2. No illegal content:

    • Do not discuss, promote, or engage in illegal activities
    • While OPSEC can be used for criminal activity, we will not offer assistance to anyone planning to use it for such
  3. Quality Content:

    • Provide only good, factual and credible advice
    • Avoid spreading misinformation or unverified claims
    • Avoid low-effort posts, spam and sensationalism
    • Copypastas are allowed only as comments and if related to the post or parent comment.
    • Do not post AI-generated content; anyone can ask ChatGPT for assistance so do what you do best: be a human
    • Anyone giving blatantly false advice will be permanently banned
  4. No Self-Promotion:

    • Refrain from excessive self-promotion or advertising
    • Occasional sharing of personal projects is allowed if it benefits the community
  5. Threat Models:

    • Do not ask for advice without mentioning your threat model
    • Do not provide advice ridiculously outside the asker's threat model
    • Do not provide advice without knowing the asker's threat model (except when providing general advice to the community)

What is OPSEC?

Operations security (OPSEC) is a process that identifies critical information to determine whether friendly actions can be observed by enemy intelligence, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to them, and then executes selected measures that eliminate or reduce adversary exploitation of friendly critical information.

In simpler terms, it is the process of finding vulnerabilities that an adversary could exploit and patching them, thereby reducing your attack surface.

OPSEC is NOT a synonym for cybersecurity. It can encompass it; however, it also revolves around physical security.


Useful resources

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (2 children)

As a painfully oblivious layman, what is an exif data and how do I remove it?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (2 children)

EXIF data is sometimes appended when you take pictures and often includes things like the coordinates it was taken at (exact location), the device it was taken on, and some additional identifiers. This is, of course, bad for privacy, especially when posting online, as someone can accurately track you just from the image.

I found this article, which seems to describe how to remove it fairly well and does not appear to be sponsored.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago

If you don’t care about reduced quality, you can just use a screenshot of the image.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Though I think most platforms already strip it for you (or at least the really confidential stuff like location). That's what I noticed when uploading and downloading an image and comparing the data on different platforms.

Edit: I should have read the title

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Yes, I already mentioned that in the title. However, it is always bad practice to rely on a third party for your privacy. Especially a third party that profits off of your data.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Exif can also be removed via shortcuts on iOS devices

Example: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2027b9d938e847029a636c6faa831a08