Threat-Model and Hardening Proposal for a Whistleblower Intake
Overview
What this challenge is about.
Threat-model a whistleblower intake with LINDDUN, evaluate three alternatives, and recommend a migration plan. Earn a verifiable certificate.
The scenario
The organization is a civic-tech-adjacent human-rights NGO that supports whistleblowers reporting corporate misconduct across 14 jurisdictions, operating with a lean staff of about 35 and a single part-time security engineer.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
Design a defensible, hardened anonymous-intake architecture for the NGO and chart a realistic phased migration, grounded in an honest threat model of the system it replaces.
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Apply the LINDDUN privacy-threat framework to a real anonymous-communication system with explicitly modeled attackers
- Compare anonymity-preserving architectures on equal footing using a shared threat list and primary documentation
- Distinguish threats that an architecture eliminates from those it only reduces, and communicate residual risk honestly
- Translate a security recommendation into a migration plan constrained by a small team's operational and legal realities
- Write security findings in plain language a non-technical board can act on
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Aligned coursework coming soon.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Anonymous Communication
Apply anonymous communication to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Threat Modeling
Apply threat modeling to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Tor
Apply tor to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Privacy Engineering
Apply privacy engineering to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Risk Classification
Apply risk classification to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Privacy Budget
Apply privacy budget to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:
Security Engineer
This challenge mirrors core security-engineering work: producing a defensible threat model, evaluating architectures against shared threats, and recommending a hardened design that a stakeholder can act on and defend.
This challenge sharpens
- threat-modeling
- privacy-engineering
- risk-classification
Privacy Engineer
Privacy engineers operationalize frameworks like LINDDUN to find linkability and identifiability risks before they reach production. The exercise builds exactly that muscle on a high-stakes anonymous-communication system.
This challenge sharpens
- privacy-engineering
- anonymous-communication
- privacy-budget
Security Architect
Architects must compare candidate designs honestly and sequence change against organizational constraints. Recommending a target architecture and phased migration for a resource-limited NGO rehearses that judgment directly.
This challenge sharpens
- threat-modeling
- anonymous-communication
- risk-classification