Monday, February 06, 2012

INFOSEC Train Wreck?

I'm ponder'n it over at USNIBlog.

48-hr liberty chit over any weekend if you can figure out what the pic I used on the post is over there is.

13 comments:

steeljawscribe said...

"Pausing at Frederick, Maryland to rest his troops, Lee penned his Special Orders No. 191 outlining campaign objectives. The Confederate army would march westward across South Mountain. Half the army under Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson would descend upon Federal garrisons at Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, while the other half, under Gen. James Longstreet accompanied by Lee, would continue west to Hagerstown near to the Pennsylvania state line. Lee would leave a rearguard at South Mountain under Gen. D. H. Hill to watch for pursuit. In this fashion, Lee the gambler broke the cardinal military rule of never splitting one’s forces in the face of a superior enemy—with or without a mountain intervening.
A copy of Lee’s orders was unaccountably left behind at Frederick, falling into McClellan’s hands on Saturday, September 13, 1862. Armed with the "Lost Order," McClellan devised surgical counter-strategy to compromise Lee’s movements in mid-stride and to perhaps close the war. During the postwar era, veterans and historians agreed that the finding of the Lost Orders was without doubt the turning point of the campaign, perhaps of the entire war due to the then favorable climate for foreign intervention."
w/r, SJS

steeljawscribe said...

...and here's the source reference...
w/r, SJS

Andy said...

Well dang it, SJ, just because you're on EST and get up before I do, don't go all "Nyah, Nyah" on the rest of us and beat us to G.O. 191. BTW, Sal, I got the info easily because you didn't OPSEC the picture title, leaving it with the Cramptons Gap label. In G-d We Trust, All Others We Monitor. ;)

steeljawscribe said...

Hey Andy -- sources & methods man -- can't go giving away all the good stuff ;)

NAVSSESer said...

It does get a little more challenging if you change the title of the photo before you download it from wikimedia.........

cdrsalamander said...

You're missing the point .....

ewok40k said...

Lets get to it, whole computers and internet stuff is about making people accessing more information - and more easily than anytime before in the human history, while the very idea of OPSEC is to restrict the flow of information to the maximum. The technology is constantlyevolving towards transferring more data faster and easier. It was first around the WW2 when scientists were pushed into the multitude of breaktrough weapons programs from RADAR to the Manhattan Project when the natural tendence of scientists to exchange and discuss information freely collided with the OPSEC. Now we have the same on a global scale.
It was the global air travel industry that spawned the global reach of the terrorists, and it is the global reach of the internet that allows multitude of actors, again, nation states and otherwise to "project information gathering" deep into "enemy territory". And similarily to the EMP, there is a "backwardness bonus" of having no modern data network in place to hack into. 

LT Rusty said...

heh

I got the point, though ... when you leave information laying around carelessly, someone else will exploit it.  Just like we all did.

William Powell said...

Harry Turtledove created a whole different timeline of the US and the Confederacy based upon that copy of the orders NOT being lost.

ewok40k said...

well, another what if of similar ilk is how much more allied blood would cost defeat of the Reich without ULTRA (basic cut-off point, Poles dont start their effort in 1930s and no groundwork is done, everybody assumes Enigma is uncrackable)...

Marine6 said...

SJS you forgot to identify the brand of cigars enclosed within the order.

NAVSSESer said...

Touche.  Well played, good Sir, well played.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

Not no more, seems USNI had to delete your post, as Anonymous is afoot.  Cowardly turds they be.