Don’t Be an Infosec Racist

Don’t be an infosec racist! We live in a progressive world and your views on infosec are outdated! Unlike what school and parents have taught you, everyone in the world isn’t as secure as you! You have been lied to! Make sure to use megacorp-respecting terminology to avoid offending your local megacorps whenever you discuss security online! Don’t say Do say Regular phishing E-mail Sophisticated social engineering attack Bored high school teenager Team of Russian hackers Public S3 bucket without authentication Targeted data breach Fleet of Raspberry Pis with default password State-sponsored botnet AWS, GCP, Azure, etc. Our global infrastructure MD5 Secure password algorithm SSLv3 Military-grade security The .exe file that Martha from accounting clicked Backdoor of unknown origin Tape library that nobody remembers Backup infrastructure Old ERP client written in Java that plugs directly into an SQL server Our internal systems Web service running as root Privilege escalation 4chan State-backed hacking group “Oh shit oh fuck oh jesus what the hell do we do when did we last test our backups” “Engineers are already working on a fix”

A satirical infographic contrasts blunt descriptions of insecure systems and incidents with polished, corporate-friendly cybersecurity terminology. The joke is that organizations rebrand obvious vulnerabilities, negligence, and panic as sophisticated infrastructure, strategic attacks, or active remediation. It is shared as a reaction to security jargon, corporate euphemisms, and attempts to make embarrassing failures sound professional.

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