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name: opsec-discipline description: Use when about to take any outward or offensive action (request, payload, persistence, lateral movement, exfil, or feeding captured traffic to the model) — to decide detection footprint, cleanup, and secret redaction first

OPSEC Discipline

Overview

Decide the detection footprint and cleanup before acting, not after. Every offensive technique in this repo pairs with the telemetry it generates and a detection signature — use that pairing to choose the quieter path and to know what you'll need to clean up.

Before acting, answer three questions

1. Detection — what telemetry does this generate? Which Sigma/EDR rule would catch it? (Each domain skill's OPSEC & Detection table has this.) Pick the lower-noise variant when one exists.
2. Cleanup — what does this touch (files, registry, services, accounts, tickets)? How is it reverted? Stage the cleanup before you create the artifact.
3. Secret hygiene — any captured traffic / output that reaches the model or the report must be redacted at the boundary: python skills/coding-mastery/scripts/_lib/redact_headers.py < exchange.txt (or redact_text()), so Authorization/Cookie/API-key/JWT values never land in context or the report.

Red Flags — STOP, decide OPSEC first

• "I'll worry about cleanup after I'm in" (you won't; decide now)
• "Just paste the raw request/response" (redact secrets at the boundary first)
• "Loudest exploit is fine, it works" (pick the variant with the smaller footprint)
• "Persistence now, document later" (persistence on un-authorized hosts is out — see scope-discipline)
• "The token's only in a log" (a logged secret is a leaked secret — mask it)

Rationalizations

Excuse	Reality
"OPSEC slows me down"	Unplanned noise/loot is how engagements get burned and how data leaks.
"It's an internal tool log"	Logs get shipped, shared, and indexed. Redact.
"Cleanup is a reporting-phase task"	You can't clean what you didn't track. Track at action time.

OPSEC is part of every action, not a phase. Detection-awareness also strengthens the defensive value of the finding (you can tell the client exactly how to catch it).