The whole "obscurity isn't security" thing is a super interesting topic. Suppose you have a static file on a public web server and you want to control access to

The whole "obscurity isn't security" thing is a super interesting topic. Suppose you have a static file on a public web server and you want to control access to the file... confidentiality. Many people would agree that if you come up with a long string, don't disclose it to untrusted parties, and use it as a basic auth password, then you have secured the file to some extent. And many people would claim that if you take that same undisclosed string, and make it a path segment (parent directory) for the file, then you have merely obscured the file, or perhaps secured it to a far lesser extent. The former makes it "not available to the public" while the latter makes it "available to the public, they just don't know where to look." I call BS. These are pretty much the same thing* which is to say: an adversary trying to get the file needs to know something that they don't know, and can't reasonably guess/discover any time soon. Did you secure it or obscure it? Whatever you call it, you require a "something you know" factor. *Obviously, there's the fact that other parts of the stack -- browser history, access logs, rate limiting, etc. -- actually treat a password payload with the respect it deserves and assume there's nothing sensitive about a URI path... kindly pretend my example doesn't have this flaw.