Security by Obscurity – Why Hiding Is Not Security

In the world of IT, it’s easy to come across practices that look clever at first glance but are little more than smoke and mirrors. One of them is security by obscurity – an approach where system protection relies mainly on hiding information to make it harder for an attacker to understand how things work and where vulnerabilities might exist, instead of using real, strong security mechanisms.

Security through obscurity assumes that an attacker will not notice something, will not find it, or will not think to look for it. By relying on obscurity, you assume that someone won’t come up with the same ideas you did, won’t run a directory scanner, won’t use tools like Burp Suite, won’t analyze application logic, or inspect network traffic. That assumption is flawed by definition. Attackers have tools, automation, scanners, and experience. For them, finding hidden elements is not a puzzle to solve after hours – it’s a routine step performed automatically by their tools.

Obscurity also shifts priorities in the wrong direction. If a system is designed around hiding things, effort is spent on covering up weaknesses rather than fixing them. Instead of improving authorization, an endpoint is hidden. Instead of securing authentication, the admin panel path is changed. In the short term, this can create a sense of control. In the long term, it creates an illusion of security.

Real security works even when an attacker knows the entire architecture of your system – which libraries are used, how the application is structured, and where the endpoints are. Security cannot rely on secrecy. It should be based on proper data encryption, correct authorization, solid input validation, the principle of least privilege, and regular dependency updates.

Obscurity can be an additional layer – something that may slow down random scanners. But if security depends on it, the assumption is that the attacker will simply not look where they should. In the world of cybersecurity, that assumption simply does not stand. A system is truly secure only if, even after its “hidden” elements are exposed, an attacker is still blocked by strong, properly implemented protections.