That seems like a significant security risk
Probably not for the reason you think.
Like, it wouldn’t be patched into anything official
But it means Musk knew where that ship was 24/7, and I’m pretty sure that’s why Ukraine’s military stopped using it. Musk tipped off Putin to troop movements.
The reason I think is because any unofficial and potentially unsecured communications access point seems like a vulnerability. If some moron posts a picture using that unofficial access point I’d be worried it could be traced to the ship’s location.
It was exactly the reason I was thinking
And I’m sure whoever put it there faced way more harsher penalties than a certain someone who willfully hid highly classified documents in his bathroom for months and lied about it to investigators.
According to Navy Times, reduction in rank. According to my experience, likely going to be told they can’t re-enlist after the end of their current term. Likely shipped stateside and in charge of mowing the lawn somewhere.
The source story is worth a read.
Marrero’s background is in Navy intelligence, and she earned a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in information security and digital management
Incredible.
she soon changed the “STINKY” Wi-Fi network name to another moniker that looked like a wireless printer — even though no such general-use wireless printers were present on the ship
Why not just switch off broadcasting the SSID?
[The CO and XO] then conducted another sweep inside the ship. Although the network that appeared to be a wireless printer appeared on their personal devices during their search, neither made additional inquiries regarding that network
No-one’s coming out of this looking good.
Marrero’s secret Starlink dish was removed the same day, and Marrero told another unidentified crew member the next day that it was authorized for in-port use — prompting sailors to re-install the illegal Starlink.
It just keeps going!
To be fair, if the lead NCO of a unit is just going to flat out lie then a lot of people are going to believe it. I can’t imagine being a lower NCO or enlisted and thinking command actually authorized the chiefs to break operational security for entertainment, but only them. Every chief in that crew should be busted and flagged against promotion again. The investigation was completely right to say if they didn’t know, they should have.
I may have missed it in this article, though I believe I read elsewhere, that she got busted down one rank and that’s it. I know military in general is having retention and recruitment issues, but to me this is more than just a busting down offense. That the senior enlisted on a ship would so nonchalantly disregard OPSEC demonstrates either a clear lack of understanding, or worse, something more nefarious.
We saw a naval officer relieved of command for having the scope backwards on his rifle. This, to me, rises to a much higher level.
There’s a lot of punishment that doesn’t show up in the top line in the military. She may be flagged to lose her security clearance, (dishonesty, incompetence, and corruption) which would be the end of her career. They may also outright flag her as not eligible for re-enlistment. She’s certainly not ever going to live that down and it’s not a counseling form that disappears in six months. I’d be very surprised if she ever promotes again.
All that said, where I was, in the infantry, lying to your commander like that, while endangering the unit, would be either an Other Than Honorable discharge or a Big Chicken Dinner. (Bad Conduct discharge, do not pass go, do not bother with the VA, do not collect retirement, hope future employers never ask about your discharge)
Yeah and that destroyer CO relieved of command for letting his sailors get treatment for COVID (before we had a vaccine) but this sailor just gets busted a rank for breaching OPSEC?! It’s not like she did it for fun, she’s probably compromised by some foreign actor. I’ve heard stories of the military making dumb decisions but damn.
First thought I had after read through, how much did that masters cost and you didn’t learn that you can turn off the broadcast name so only people who know it’s there can connect? Probably not even a real degree, freakonomjcs did an episode maybe 10 years ago that said probably 5% of degrees are fake, bet it’s 20% now, lying is culturally through the roof.
Having an understanding of technology generically and knowing how specific technologies work are vastly different things. The first takes great effort. The second is done by a nerd who can’t sleep and is curious. If you didn’t do the second then you don’t know anything about that specific thing.
Exactly, and very often the only difference between BS level courses and MS level were the need to write extra papers and get better grades. And almost all of it was theoretical.
On the other hand, what bothers me in industry is when people are like “these damned kids don’t know nothing” when in reality you are talking about VERY motivated people who are highly intelligent but without experience. They just need direction and the chance to build confidence.
MBAs should be renamed Master’s in Bullshit Administration.
The levels of incompetence.
What’s better is that, thanks to Elon Musk, “STINKY” is the default name for its Starlink wifi. These people didn’t even change that.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-starlink-wifi-stinky
Don’t worry! I’m sure the default username and password didn’t get changed either.
Hmm I got Starlink earlier this year and I don’t remember it having a default. I think it asked me to set the ssid immediately.
To make matters even worse…
The chiefs found that the Wi-Fi signal coming off the Starlink satellite transceiver couldn’t cover the entire ship, so during a stop in Pearl Harbor, they bought “signal repeaters and cable” to extend coverage.
Dude isn’t American. More money than a sovereign nation. Space level ballistic capabilities. Openly aligned with our enemies and their values.
How the fuck does he have a penny of my federal fucking tax dollars? We’re funding fucking terrorists that don’t even need the subsidies.
deleted by creator
Here’s the meat and potatoes of the article.
In 2023, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a Starlink terminal to the “O-5 level weatherdeck” of a US warship.
They called the resulting Wi-Fi network “STINKY”—and when officers on the ship heard rumors and began asking questions, the leader of the scheme brazenly lied about it. Then, when exposed, she went so far as to make up fake Starlink usage reports suggesting that the system had only been accessed while in port, where cybersecurity and espionage concerns were lower.
Rather unsurprisingly, the story ends badly, with a full-on Navy investigation and court-martial.
when officers on the ship heard rumors
Lol not only is this an incredible violation of security, they couldn’t even keep their fucking mouths shut about it.
average starlink user, worse than arch users
What really surprises me is that the ships equipment never picked up on those unauthorized signals. Hell they can pick up pavarotti in pearl harbour on their sonar. (Red oktober reference) . but they cant pick up multiple unknown signals in the 2.4 and 5 GHz band
That movie is not very realistic.
Are you telling me that some things do react well to bullets?
It’s a very subjective question. Arguably some people do. That’s why we make bullets and the devices for sending them.
Wow just wow. Mind is blown. If thats your response you probably have no idea what my point was
the ship’s* equipment
Between Trump stealing national security secrets and shit like this, it’s honestly shocking the USA hasn’t already become a full-fledged fascist hell-hole. It’s currently only half-fledged.
But seriously, it must be fucking child’s play for other nations to spy on us with dumb fucking shit like this happening.
Hey, give us a chance. We have another election right around the corner and things are really looking good for a solid commitment to fully flegged hell-holism.
Oh it’s the same with other countries too. We all regularly have breaches due to the dumbest shit. Just ask the War Thunder community. It’s about time for them to have another one.
Ya mean like ppl using classified information in World of Tanks forums to prove a point… more than once?
can we just fucking all take a break for a month? just have things go to being boring?
I attended a fucking ethics of ai talk at my work, only to run into a fucking knockoff nazi complaining about the founding fathers images being generated with black people, and talking about how silicon valley is too left wing.
either you’re so stupid that you don’t understand it’s a fucking alt-right dog whistle, or you’re a fucking nazi who gets very, very upset if you see a black person in any context. Either way, just shut the fuck up.
i was wondering why would you choose such a stupid WiFi access point name, then I read that it was Elon musk that decided that the default starlink AP name has to be that stupid so people would change it
The fact that they didn’t even try to hide their ssid (or at least, the report doesn’t say they did) shows how stupid people can be with cybersecurity.
To be fair, this is a navy ship. If they got the sniffers out and found a hidden one then the officers would be tearing the ship apart to find it right then and there. Hiding in plain view was the better choice.
To be mean, because these chiefs deserve it, Stinky is apparently the default name. These fucking geniuses left the default name up rather than try to camouflage it as a legitimate network. So I’m pretty sure none of the top part went through their smooth brains. They just assumed it would go unnoticed. Then they assumed they had enough privilege to make the enlisted think this was proper. Forgetting just how pugnacious the middle enlisted can be when they feel something is both unfair and know it’s against regs. (They will make it their life’s mission to humble a leader, and they win more often than not)
If I was in a warship, I’d want TikTok too.
You can take your porn collection on a few USB sticks. And games. And movies. And books. And music.
The Rosenbergs died for less.
Heads should roll.
