Overview

• Two Army-affiliated publications inadvertently exposed the identities of at least 20 special forces soldiers in publicly accessible documents over a span of more than ten years.
• The documents, updated as recently as a few months ago, lacked basic safeguards like password protection and potentially revealed active personnel engaged in live operations.
• The Ministry of Defence has taken down the publications, notified the affected soldiers, and launched an internal investigation to address the security lapse.
• The exposed documents included soldiers' names, ranks, and codenames commonly associated with elite units like the SAS and SBS, raising concerns about potential risks from adversaries.
• This breach follows a 2021 incident where over 100 special forces identities were accidentally disclosed via an internal email, highlighting recurring data security challenges.