Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer security

This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject Computer security and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

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There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Cyberwarfare by Russia#Requested move 27 March 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Qwerty123M (talk) 01:49, 28 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:59, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Trojan horse (computing)#Requested move 30 May 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 🦅White-tailed eagle^{Talk to the eagle}Stalking eagle 01:18, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I restructured the project page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer security to feature specific todo items, clarify scope, and hide some outdated material. To @DanielPharos or any other members who might still have an eye on things, I'm interested in thoughts, suggestions, and objections. Dreamyshade (talk) 21:55, 14 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

A few suggestions:

• The article at hacker has an awkward relationship with security hacker and needs a rewrite - see discussion at Talk:Hacker#Structure
• Computer security gets a lot of views but is not in good shape as a whole; the United States section is outdated
• Social engineering (security) - "Countermeasures" section needs expansion
• Login needs citations and is very short, which provides a good opportunity to integrate material about authentication and authorization, MFA, passkeys, cookies, and related topics in a plain language way
• Password manager needs material about benefits to balance out the emphasis on vulnerabilities; tagged as needing citations since 2013
• Onion routing - tagged as outdated since 2017
• Cryptographic nonce - tagged as needing citations since 2013
• Keychain (software) - also tagged as needing citations since 2013
• Bytecode - tagged as needing citations since 2009
• Pop-up ad - tagged as needing citations since 2008

Dreamyshade (talk) 22:09, 14 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would add that the "hacker has an awkward relationship with security hacker" should probably also include Black hat (computer security), and possibly even Threat actor. I'd also be inclinded to remove bytecode from the security project (and indeed, pop-up ad) Joe (talk) 12:28, 15 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that those hacker-related articles need sorting out as a whole, following the guidelines at Wikipedia:Summary style.

Bytecode and pop-up ad aren't tagged to this WikiProject, but I ran into them while assessing security-related articles. Pop-up ad would be helpful to improve because it's related to adware, scareware, and malvertising (another article that needs work), including technical support scams and ransomware.

Another open task: cybersecurity engineering should be merged into security engineering (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cybersecurity engineering). Dreamyshade (talk) 16:20, 17 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I took a quick swing at moving some of the content for that merge. It should be a bit easier now. Worth noting that we should also merge in Secure by design (which I've just PROD'd) and maybe Secure coding while we are here? Joe (talk) 08:48, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for starting that merge! I believe secure by design could be a pretty interesting and robust article because of its specific intersection with US and UK government initiatives, especially CISA. I'll write a brief note on the talk page there. Secure coding could also be a good and helpful article if cleaned up, although the scope of that article vs. defensive programming should be clarified. Dreamyshade (talk) 16:24, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Curious if you have opinions on how to handle psychology in cybersecurity. The article, as it stands, is WP:OR/WP:SYNTH and fails verification (see Talk:Psychology in cybersecurity). Currently the only article that links there is cyberpsychology. The topic is a plausible article subject (I provided a list of sources on the talk page), but it needs WP:TNT. Options include WP:STUBBIFY or nominate to merge with another article. It's related to usable security, engineering psychology, and social engineering, but none of them seem like a clear merge target. (Courtesy ping to @Kaolay who wrote this article.) Dreamyshade (talk) 19:47, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I am cautious about having on-wiki opinions on that one to be honest. Like, yeah, the whole area is *woefully* underserved on Wikipedia, but I'd be citing people I have to sit next to at meetings... Joe (talk) 20:40, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I note from https://projo.toolforge.org/jobs/ea29f?min_pageviews=4000&names_only=1&max_quality=.5&cleanup_only=1&sort=pageviews&dir=desc, that Hacker really is our biggest problem. Do we think we have enough energy to a) open up a merge conversation with Security hacker and b) agree a set of, like, five really serious sources that are high-quality, Post-2020 and that involved editors all have access to, so that those sources can be the backbone of the resulting article? Joe (talk) 20:44, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That's funny about psychology in cybersecurity. This field is certainly a small world sometimes.

Hacker is a really challenging article. I'm up for helping but don't yet have a vision of what it could be, and I'd want to have a clear goal before proposing a merge. Could be helpful to start a rewrite in draftspace, at least an outline? Have you looked at the old versions for inspiration? This version from 2023 is interesting to me. Dreamyshade (talk) 21:00, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think we are in the same place. I think I need a solid set of sources to come to a vision. Maybe we come back to it after clearing up some of the other bits. We've certainly got a lot to do! Joe (talk) 21:10, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The ISO/IEC 27000 family and related articles need a lot of work (in the first place, I think most of the articles aren't even tagged for this project). I'm putting it on my list but I'd welcome anyone with an interest in the topic to get in touch Joe (talk) 21:04, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Joereddington I support figuring out how to deal with the many poorly-sourced, vague, and duplicative articles in this topic area, but I support avoiding WP:BATHWATER through applying Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Alternatives to deletion. This includes: "If editing can address all relevant reasons for deletion, this should be done rather than deleting the page." and "If two pages are duplicates or otherwise redundant, one should be merged and redirected to the other, using the most common, or more general page name." I'll write notes on the talk pages for Information security awareness, Software security assurance, and Security kernel. Dreamyshade (talk) 16:11, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Off-by-one error - 15k views over the past 30 days - tagged as confusing, needs citations
• Race condition - 7.8k views - needs citations
• Time-of-check to time-of-use - 6k views - needs citations
• Segmentation fault - 4.3k views - tagged as needing citations since 2011
• Object-capability model - 2.6k views - tagged as needing citations since 2013
• Reference counting - 2.4k views - tagged as needing citations since 2015
• Pseudonymization - 1.5k views - needs some rewriting and citations
• Type conversion - 1k views - tagged as needing citations since 2011
• Data validation - 1k views - tagged as needing citations since 2016
• Memory protection - tagged as needing citations since 2012

Dreamyshade (talk) 20:46, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed there's a list of vital computer security articles (40 articles), and I linked to it from our scope statement. Interestingly, when I use PetScan to make a list of articles at the intersection of Category:All Computer security articles and Category:All Wikipedia vital articles, there are 71 results, since there are security-related articles within other lists of vital articles. I ran that list through Projo and found a couple nice opportunities to improve vital articles: Patch (computing) and Electronic lock both have minimal citations. Dreamyshade (talk) 07:31, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]