U.S. Navy Warns Adversaries Are Targeting Navy, Marines Personnel and Their Families
Hostile actors are carrying out coordinated, multi-domain campaigns against U.S. sailors and Marines, according to a 19 August notice from the Acting Secretary of the U.S. Navy, Hung Cao. Cao called on Navy members to harden their online profiles and hide ties to the military.
The memo explained that Navy and Marine Corps personnel and their families have been harassed on social media and other online platforms, including doxing—the exposure of personal information. Threats extend to aerial drones surveilling bases, direct attempts to attack bases, and harassment campaigns at bases. The memo noted that coordinated harassment campaigns were “designed to test security responses and personnel endurance at widely dispersed locations.”
“Recent incidents across the globe demonstrate a clear growth in adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures,” the notice said. “These are not isolated events; they are part of a deliberate effort to gather intelligence, test our defenses, disrupt our operations, and intimidate our force.”
The increase in adversary targeting is likely due to the war in Iran, known in the U.S. military as Operation EPIC FURY. In response to the emerging threats, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) implemented the new force protection initiative, EPIC VIGILANCE.
The memo directed personnel to take immediate action: review social media accounts (including those of family members) for any publicly available information, set profiles to private, and remove information that could identify the user’s connection to the Navy or reveal patterns of life.
“Adversaries are actively mining this data,” the memo said.
The Navy also recommended that personnel report suspicious activity: “Trust your instincts, a seemingly minor observation may be a critical component to identify and mitigate threats. Force protection is everyone’s responsibility.”
The memo said that, based on recent events, personnel should immediately report observations of possible surveillance, including photography of gates, perimeter fences, ships, aircraft, or housing areas; uncrewed aerial system use near Navy installations, especially at night; suspicious questioning about ship or personnel movement, deployment dates, leadership schedules, or personal information; personnel targeting, especially while in uniform; and threatening or suspicious cyber activity, including imposter social media accounts of shipmates.
Cao’s predecessor, John Phelan, issued a similar notice earlier this year, warning of cyber operations against Navy personnel, according to Task and Purpose. While Phelan recommended steps for digital security, Cao’s message goes further by recommending personnel hide information linking them to the military.
As corporate security professionals are likely aware, it’s very difficult to scrub information from the Internet once it’s already posted, especially because personal data is part of an interconnected ecosystem online. As David Muse wrote for Security Management earlier this year about executive protection, “Data brokers buy and sell information across hundreds of platforms, each maintaining its own database. Public records like property deeds, voter registrations, and business filings all remain accessible by law and are regularly scraped and republished. In addition, archived versions of websites save information long after it’s been removed from the original sources.
“Adversaries can layer this intelligence with additional information from real estate listings, satellite imagery, mapping software, and even floor plans from county websites to build a detailed blueprint of residences, offices, event spaces, and any location where an executive might be vulnerable,” he continued. “They locate ingress and egress routes, entry points, and even security system indicators captured in street-level views. With this level of detail, attackers can plan approaches to multiple locations and identify the optimal time and place for interception. This allows them to escalate from digital surveillance to direct physical targeting like stalking, kidnapping, home invasions, and opportunistic attacks when executives are on the go.”
