Security News US Navy tells sailors and their families: scrub your social media, enemies are watching

[Brownie2019]

Content source

https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/us-navy-sailors-families-scrub-social-media-enemies-watching

The US Navy has told its entire workforce of 340,000 active-duty personnel, 58,000 reservists, and 210,000 civilian employees to clean up their social media profiles, because adversaries might be using them to determine who they are, where they live, and when they may not be at home.

The advice comes in the form of a newly-published bulletin called "Epic Vigilance: Immediate Actions for Force Protection and Personal Security."

According to the advisory, "a coordinated, multi-domain campaign" is being run by adversaries against the US Navy as part of a "deliberate effort to gather intelligence, test our defenses, disrupt our operations, and intimidate our force."

The warning, of course, comes amid the on-going US-Israeli military campaign against Iran.

US Navy workers and their families are being told that they should ensure that their social media profile privacy settings are enabled, and to remove anything that connects them to the Navy, or reveals "patterns of life" that an attacker could exploit.

Full Story:

US Navy tells sailors and their families: scrub your social media, enemies are watching

The US Navy has told its entire workforce of 340,000 active-duty personnel, 58,000 reservists, and 210,000 civilian employees to clean up their social media profiles, because adversaries might be using them to determine who they are, where they live, and when they may not be at home.

www.bitdefender.com

 

[Bot]

Full Story:

US Navy tells sailors and their families: scrub your social media, enemies are watching

The US Navy has told its entire workforce of 340,000 active-duty personnel, 58,000 reservists, and 210,000 civilian employees to clean up their social media profiles, because adversaries might be using them to determine who they are, where they live, and when they may not be at home.

www.bitdefender.com

Why this matters

This is a reasonable operational-security precaution, not necessarily evidence that every Navy employee or family member is being individually monitored. Publicly available information can be combined from social-media posts, data brokers, property records, breach data, and geolocation metadata to build useful profiles.

The most important risks include:

• Real-time location sharing, check-ins, and geotagged photographs
• Posts revealing deployment schedules, work locations, routines, or upcoming travel
• Photos showing badges, access cards, documents, vehicle plates, or identifiable facilities
• Public family details that expose addresses, relatives, schools, or periods when a home is unoccupied
• Impersonation and targeted phishing based on publicly visible relationships and job information

Changing privacy settings helps, but it is not a complete solution. Existing posts may already have been copied, indexed, or archived, and friends or relatives may unintentionally disclose the same information. Accounts should also use unique passwords, multifactor authentication, updated recovery details, and review of connected applications.

The safest approach is to remove unnecessary sensitive information, avoid posting current movements or schedules, review family accounts as well as official personnel accounts, and report suspicious messages through the appropriate Navy or platform channels. This bulletin should be read as an OPSEC and personal-safety advisory rather than as confirmation of a specific threat against any individual.

 

[Victor M]

these iranians are crafty. just think, they DOS spotify as one of their revenge. what wild thing will they think of next ? now is the right time to be paranoid and careful, no shame.

 

[Wrecker4923]

It seems to me like textbook intelligence gathering. The news outlet has been using this before the Iran War. I’m surprised the warning came so late.

I’m pretty sure that whatever the major powers (intelligence, cybersecurity, etc.) are doing to others, the superpowers have long been doing those very things.

For consumers, though, with the unintended use of personal data everywhere now, it’s long past time to move into private (E2EE) spaces as much as possible. The era of sharing personal info via social platforms is over; you want to do that professionally if you absolutely need to.

P.S.: Having hundreds/thousands of posts across forums probably doesn't help either .

 

[Zero Knowledge]

Why this was allowed in the first place is beyond me. I know soldiers get lonely but having social media is asking for trouble.

 

[oldschool]

You can't bully and blast other countries and not expect pushback. Of course, it's the rank and file that suffer. Word!