# A black bar has a length, and length is data

> A redacted account list hides every value under a bar of a different length. The two rows left open are the ones judged harmless, and they date the whole sheet.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/credential-leak-index

A long column of rows, printed zine-rough in charcoal and one red. Each row pairs a name field
with a value field.

Every value is blacked out under a solid bar, and no two bars run the same length. Two rows were
left alone. One reads `ADMIN`. The other reads `1998`.

A bar drawn to match the word underneath isn't hiding the word. It's printing the word's shape in
a different font.

## What is a credential leak index?

A list of accounts, run through a redaction pass that stopped at the one step redaction is for.

The name column stays legible on every row — somebody decided names weren't the sensitive part.
The value column is the part that mattered, and it's covered edge to edge with black. What's left
is a document that still tells you the shape of everything it was trying to hide.

## Why does a bar's length give away what it hides?

Because the convention most redaction follows draws the bar to fit the text, not to a fixed size.

A short bar sits over a short string. A long bar sits over a long one. That's a habit borrowed
from proofreading, where you strike a line through exactly the words you're striking, and it
survives into digital redaction because it looks tidier than a row of identical rectangles. The
cost is that length is information: a four-character bar rules out most long passwords before
anyone's tried a single guess, the way [a leaked internal diagram gives an intruder a floor plan
for free](/stories/hacked-hardware-diagram) whether or not it was meant to.

## What makes a convincing redaction print, as opposed to a lazy one?

Keeping the flaw, not fixing it.

A print where every bar was the same length would look competent and say nothing — competence
isn't the joke. The variable-length bars are the entire reason the design works: the eye clocks
the pattern before it clocks what the pattern means, and the two words left standing, `ADMIN` and
`1998`, only land because everything around them was covered. Uniform bars would be better
security practice and a worse shirt.

## Whose credentials would actually be on a list like this?

Nobody's — and inventing the rows isn't a workaround, it's the honest way to make this.

A real leaked account list is somebody's actual exposure printed a second time, and there's no
permission process that turns that into wearable material — it isn't a trademark changing hands,
it's a person's security failing twice. An invented sheet does everything the design needs: rows
enough to read as a real export, two words left legible, the rest an even column of bars in
believable but fictional lengths. It's also the funnier version. A genuine breach dump is
alarming. A good fake reads as a joke about the format redaction uses, which is the actual
subject here.

## Does the same idea work for something other than a login list?

Anywhere a form blacks out specific fields while leaving the row structure standing — a court
filing, a personnel file, an internal memo with names cut but titles left in.

A staff directory redacted down to job titles works the same way [a badge that reduces a person
to a clearance level does](/stories/corporate-employee-badge) — the shape of the
organisation survives even when every individual in it has been covered over. The trick travels
because the failure is structural, not specific to accounts: any list where the columns stay and
the content doesn't repeats the joke.

## Isn't a solid black bar the obvious, safe way to redact something?

It's the version most redaction failures actually use, which is exactly why it's worth printing.

The dangerous cases in real practice aren't exotic — they're a rectangle drawn over text that's
still there underneath, or, as here, a bar sized to the word it covers. Nothing about the method
looks careless in isolation; it only fails once someone reads the shape instead of the ink. That
gap between looking finished and being finished is the same gap [a corrupted image plays with on
purpose](/stories/glitch-art-print) — the error is legible precisely because the rest
of the frame looks intact.

## Does it print well?

Yes, and the red is doing almost all the work.

Charcoal bars on a pale ground hold their edges at any size a shirt needs; the failure mode is
letting the bars go soft-edged, which reads as smudging rather than redaction. One accent colour
for the two open words is enough — red against a column of flat black bars is the whole contrast
the design needs, and a second accent would just compete with it. Keep the type monospaced so
every row lines up; a proportional font makes the bars look hand-drawn instead of institutional.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the sheet at [JustOG](/) — how many rows, which two stay open, how uneven the bars run.
Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Forty bars covering forty secrets, and two words that gave themselves away by staying still.