Opsec review

OPSEC Review

Adversarial pre-flight audit for artifacts before external exposure. Identifies unintended disclosure through inference, metadata, structure, and content signals — not just explicit sensitive data.

Pair with redact skill for PII/credential stripping. This skill covers what redact misses: the inferential layer.

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Artifact Types

Declare the artifact type at the start of review. Each has a distinct threat surface.

Type	Load reference
Code / repository	references/code-signals.md
README / documentation	references/doc-signals.md
Social post / LinkedIn / blog	references/social-signals.md
Commit message / PR description	references/doc-signals.md
Paste / log dump / stack trace	references/code-signals.md
API payload / schema	references/code-signals.md
General prose / email	references/doc-signals.md

If artifact type is ambiguous, identify it from content before proceeding.

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Threat Model

Reviews are scoped to one of three adversary profiles. Confirm with user or infer from context.

Profile A — PUBLIC INTERNET

Passive adversary. Aggregates public data. Goal: fingerprint stack, infer org structure, identify vulnerabilities, find attack surface.

Typical threat: competitor, researcher, automated scanner, bug bounty hunter, recruiter building a dossier.

Profile B — TARGETED

Active adversary with specific interest in the user or their org. Goal: correlate across sources, identify entry points, time attacks.

Typical threat: nation-state recon, social engineering setup, corporate espionage, doxxing campaign.

Profile C — INSIDER / SUPPLY CHAIN

Has partial access. Goal: elevate privileges, extract data, pivot to connected systems.

Typical threat: malicious dependency, compromised contributor, rogue contractor.

Default to Profile A unless user specifies otherwise or artifact sensitivity implies higher tier.

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Signal Categories

Run all applicable categories for the artifact type. Reference files contain detailed patterns.

1. Infrastructure Fingerprinting

What the artifact reveals about the underlying stack:

• OS/distro identifiers (file paths, shebang lines, package managers)
• Exact version strings (libraries, runtimes, tools) — enables CVE correlation
• Internal hostnames, server names, container names
• Cloud provider / region hints (ARNs, GCP project IDs, Azure tenant refs)
• Port numbers, internal service names
• CI/CD platform artifacts (pipeline IDs, runner names, workflow file structure)

Risk: Adversary maps your stack and cross-references against known CVEs.

2. Organizational Structure Leakage

What the artifact reveals about the org:

• Internal project codenames surfacing in comments, variable names, URLs
• Team names, department names, reporting structure hints
• Employee handles, Slack channel names, internal Jira/Linear ticket IDs
• Internal tool names (proprietary, not public)
• Acquisition targets, partner names before announcement
• Roadmap signals in feature flags, TODO comments, dead code

Risk: Competitive intelligence, social engineering targeting.

3. Timing & Pattern Signals

What the artifact reveals through metadata and rhythm:

• Commit timestamps revealing work hours, timezone, geographic region
• File modification times embedded in exports
• Frequency patterns (when is the team active, when are deploys?)
• Version cadence revealing release schedules
• Response time in logs revealing infrastructure performance characteristics

Risk: Physical security (when is the office empty), targeted phishing timing, infrastructure load profiling.

4. Operational Tradecraft Leakage

What the artifact reveals about methods and tooling:

• Security tool names in comments or scripts (reveals defensive posture)
• Penetration testing artifacts left in code (scan output, wordlists, payloads)
• Monitoring/alerting thresholds that reveal detection gaps
• Backup naming conventions, rotation schedules
• Auth flow details that reveal session management approach
• Feature flag naming that reveals A/B testing or phased rollout strategy

Risk: Adversary learns what you're watching for (and what you're not).

5. Dependency & Supply Chain Surface

What the artifact reveals about trust relationships:

• Unpinned dependencies (version ranges) that invite supply chain substitution
• Private registry references leaking internal package names
• Vendored code with upstream attribution revealing fork points
• Third-party service integrations (reveals data flows)
• Webhook endpoints or callback URLs

Risk: Supply chain attack surface mapping, data flow inference.

6. Geolocation & Physical Signals

What the artifact reveals about physical location:

• GPS metadata in images (EXIF)
• Timezone in timestamps or locale settings
• Language/locale settings in config files
• Office location in boilerplate, copyright notices, legal jurisdiction clauses
• IP addresses in logs that resolve to physical location

Risk: Physical surveillance, jurisdiction-based legal exposure.

7. Identity Correlation

What the artifact reveals that links to other identities:

• Usernames consistent across platforms
• Writing style, vocabulary, and phrasing patterns (stylometric fingerprinting)
• Code style signatures (indentation preference, naming conventions, comment patterns)
• Linked accounts in bios, [authored-by] fields, copyright lines
• PGP key IDs, SSH key fingerprints
• Avatar/profile image reuse

Risk: Identity correlation across pseudonymous personas, deanonymization.

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Workflow

Step 1 — Intake

Identify:

1. Artifact type
2. Intended destination (GitHub public, LinkedIn, client email, API submission, etc.)
3. Adversary profile (default: Profile A)
4. Any categories to skip

Load the appropriate reference file for the artifact type.

Step 2 — Systematic scan

Work through each Signal Category applicable to the artifact type. For each finding:

• Signal type (category name)
• Location (line, section, field)
• Finding (what was found)
• Inference (what an adversary learns)
• Severity: CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW / INFO

Step 3 — Emit findings report

=== OPSEC REVIEW REPORT ===
Artifact: [type]
Destination: [intended exposure]
Adversary profile: [A/B/C]
Reviewed: [signal categories covered]

FINDINGS
────────────────────────────────
[CRITICAL]  Infrastructure Fingerprinting
  Location: package.json line 12
  Finding:  "node": "20.11.0" (exact patch version)
  Inference: Adversary cross-references Node 20.11.0 CVE list.
  Action:   Loosen to ">=20.0.0" or remove engines field entirely.

[HIGH]      Organizational Structure Leakage
  Location: README.md, "Internal Slack: #project-helios"
  Finding:  Internal channel name + codename "Helios" exposed.
  Inference: Social engineering hook; confirms project exists pre-announcement.
  Action:   Remove. Use generic "team channel" if reference needed.

[INFO]      Timing Signal
  Location: Git commit timestamps (not in this artifact)
  Finding:  No timing signals present in artifact itself.
  Inference: N/A
  Action:   None.

SUMMARY
────────────────────────────────
Critical: 0  High: 1  Medium: 2  Low: 3  Info: 1
Overall risk: MEDIUM — address HIGH findings before publishing.

Step 4 — Remediation options

For each CRITICAL and HIGH finding, offer:

• Specific rewrite suggestion
• Whether to remove, generalize, or replace with a placeholder
• Whether redact skill should be invoked for any explicit identifiers surfaced

Step 5 — Re-review offer

After user applies fixes, offer a re-review pass to confirm resolution.

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Severity Definitions

Level	Meaning
CRITICAL	Direct, immediate exploitability or deanonymization risk
HIGH	Strong inference possible with moderate adversary effort
MEDIUM	Useful to adversary when combined with other signals
LOW	Minor signal, low standalone value
INFO	Noted for awareness, no action required

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Standing Rules

• Never approve unconditionally. Even a clean artifact gets an explicit "no significant findings" statement with the categories checked.
• Infer intent conservatively. If a signal could reveal something sensitive, flag it — let the user decide.
• Cross-signal correlation. Note when multiple LOW findings combine into a higher effective risk.
• Don't just find problems — provide rewrites. Every CRITICAL/HIGH must include a concrete remediation.
• Pseudonymous persona mode. If user indicates they operate under a handle/pseudonym, escalate Identity Correlation signals to HIGH by default.

The anti-pattern this skill rejects: badness enumeration

The dominant failure mode in consumer privacy advice — cataloged sharply by privsec.dev — is "badness enumeration": blocking known-bad things and calling it privacy. Blocklists, "trackers blocked" counters, tool-hopping (switch browser, add extension, install VPN), and endless curated app lists. It fails for a structural reason: enumerating what's bad is unbounded and always behind, while enumerating what you permit is finite and testable. A blocklist is out of date the moment a new tracker ships; a threat model is not.

This skill inverts it. It does not scan for a list of known-bad strings and stop — it models what an adversary can infer from what remains, then reasons about the whole disclosure surface. The signal categories above are inference vectors, not a blocklist; the workflow ends in a disclosure decision, not a "clean/dirty" verdict.

How this shows up in review:

• Reject "I use a VPN / I blocked trackers, so I'm private" as a conclusion — ask against which adversary, protecting which asset (route to threat-model-privacy).
• Prefer minimize-what-exists (don't publish the field) over block-what-reads-it (hope the reader doesn't parse it). Structural beats reactive — the suite thesis at the OPSEC layer.
• Tool recommendations are the last step and always tied to a modeled threat, never a default kit. A tool list with no threat model is badness enumeration wearing a lab coat.

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Reference Files

• references/code-signals.md — Detailed signal patterns for code, repos, logs, stack traces, API payloads
• references/doc-signals.md — Detailed signal patterns for docs, READMEs, social posts, commit messages, prose