Editing Security through obscurity (section)

==History==
An early opponent of security through obscurity was the locksmith [[Alfred Charles Hobbs]], who in 1851 demonstrated to the public how state-of-the-art locks could be picked. In response to concerns that exposing security flaws in the design of locks could make them more vulnerable to criminals, he said: "Rogues are very keen in their profession, and know already much more than we can teach them."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Stross|first1=Randall|title=Theater of the Absurd at the T.S.A.|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/business/yourmoney/17digi.html|website=The New York Times|date=17 December 2006|access-date=5 May 2015|archive-date=8 December 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221208063347/https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/business/yourmoney/17digi.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

There is scant formal literature on the issue of security through obscurity. Books on [[security engineering]] cite [[Kerckhoffs's principle|Kerckhoffs' doctrine]] from 1883 if they cite anything at all. For example, in a discussion about secrecy and openness in [[nuclear command and control]]:
<blockquote>[T]he benefits of reducing the likelihood of an accidental war were considered to outweigh the possible benefits of secrecy. This is a modern reincarnation of Kerckhoffs' doctrine, first put forward in the nineteenth century, that the security of a system should depend on its key, not on its design remaining obscure.<!--ref>{{cite journal | author=Auguste Kerckhoffs | author-link=Auguste_Kerckhoffs | title=La Cryptographie Militaire | journal=Journal des Sciences Militaires | date=January 9, 1883 | pages=5–38 | url=http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/fapp2/kerckhoffs/ }}</ref--><ref>{{cite book | first=Ross | last=Anderson | title=Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems | publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Inc. | location=New York, NY | year=2001 | isbn=0-471-38922-6 | page=[https://archive.org/details/securityengineer00ande/page/240 240] | url=https://archive.org/details/securityengineer00ande/page/240 | url-access=registration }}</ref></blockquote>

[[Peter Swire]] has written about the trade-off between the notion that "security through obscurity is an illusion" and the military notion that "[[loose lips sink ships]]",<ref>{{cite journal | first=Peter P. | last = Swire | title=A Model for When Disclosure Helps Security: What is Different About Computer and Network Security? | journal=Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law | year=2004 | volume=2 | ssrn=531782 }}</ref> as well as on how competition affects the incentives to disclose.<ref>{{cite journal | first=Peter P. | last = Swire | title=A Theory of Disclosure for Security and Competitive Reasons: Open Source, Proprietary Software, and Government Agencies | journal=Houston Law Review |date=January 2006 | volume=42 | ssrn=842228 }}</ref>{{explain|date=September 2022}}

There are conflicting stories about the origin of this term. Fans of [[MIT]]'s [[Incompatible Timesharing System]] (ITS) say it was coined in opposition to [[Multics]] users down the hall, for whom security was far more an issue than on ITS. Within the ITS culture, the term referred, self-mockingly, to the poor coverage of the documentation and obscurity of many commands, and to the attitude that by the time a tourist figured out how to make trouble he'd generally got over the urge to make it, because he felt part of the community. One instance of deliberate security through obscurity on ITS has been noted: the command to allow patching the running ITS system (altmode altmode control-R) echoed as <code>$$^D</code>. Typing Alt Alt Control-D set a flag that would prevent patching the system even if the user later got it right.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/security-through-obscurity.html|title=security through obscurity|work=The Jargon File|access-date=2010-01-29|archive-date=2010-03-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100329153340/http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/security-through-obscurity.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

In January 2020, [[NPR]] reported that [[Iowa Democratic Party|Democratic Party officials in Iowa]] declined to share information regarding the security of [[Shadow Inc.#IowaReporterApp|its caucus app]], to "make sure we are not relaying information that could be used against us." Cybersecurity experts replied that "to withhold the technical details of its app doesn't do much to protect the system."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/795906732/despite-election-security-fears-iowa-caucuses-will-use-new-smartphone-app|title=Despite Election Security Fears, Iowa Caucuses Will Use New Smartphone App|newspaper=NPR.org|access-date=2020-02-06|archive-date=2022-12-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221223193433/https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/795906732/despite-election-security-fears-iowa-caucuses-will-use-new-smartphone-app|url-status=live}}</ref>