After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship
To be fair, it's hard to live without Wi-Fi.
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.
Everybody knew were the ship was, because at that time star link usage by area was shown publicly. There was map online that showed all clients online.
It was exactly the reason I was thinking
I feel like every military is full of technological babies acting out security theatre with each other while everything is totally hacked.
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.
Just like a certain someone who had classified documents that they weren't even supposed to have without a handler!
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.
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.
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.
They did, because they were charging people for access to it.
He's so weirdly childish.
He’s so weird
ly childish.
Can't speak to starlink specifically, but I know some shittier router brands would often reset to factory defaults every time you updated the firmware. Can easily see starlink doing that with a pushed firmware with the expectation some additional cell phone app would restore the correct settings.
So they very well might have turned off broadcasting but it got popped back on while they were on shift and it was detected.
Nah, Starlink doesn’t reset the Wi-Fi SSID for a firmware update.
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.
This many chiefs (not rank-and-file, chiefs), putting this much effort into breaking Navy protocol, together, is crazy. And for what? Memes?
I know deployment at sea can be boring but Jesus fucking Christ, read a damn book or something.
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
Good. At a company, you get your ass fired if they catch you using non-approved equipment on company infrastructure. It can lead to leaks and infiltration, and lost of revenue.
In the military, that's people's lives!
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.
I mean, u know that SpaceXs main income is flying shit around for NASA? If that was unexpected for you, I have bad news.
Unexpected? Did my comment convey surprise? I think I'm upset bc I'm informed.
Sailors on the ship then began finding the STINKY network and asking questions about it.
Oh, c’mon. it is trivial to make an SSID “hidden” for any networking tech that you have administrative control over. That way, only those “in the know” will know the SSID name to type in, in order to access said wireless network. It would not be “discoverable” by standard wireless-connectivity gear such as the default wifi interface in mobile phones.
Hidden WiFi networks are not actually hidden in the literal sense. They still broadcast beacons that your wifi chip will see as basically “hidden network beacon lives here”. Your network connect interface just decides not to show you a list with a bunch of useless “(hidden)” entries you can’t do anything with.
Also, when a new client wants to connect to the hidden network, the first thing it does is broadcast an unencrypted message saying “HEY, I’M LOOKING FOR [hidden network name]” so it’s completely trivial to unveil the name of hidden networks given enough time.
"HEY, I’M LOOKING FOR [hidden network name]"
Client devices can also do this all the time even when not in range, which basically broadcasts they're looking for that network everywhere they go. That's just asking for someone to setup a rogue access point.
Reminds me of Sgt Bilko.
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
Command Senior Chief
The person who came up with the scheme is also the most senior NCO on the ship. All the enlisted people in charge of monitoring that activity knew, they just knew not to ask questions.You would be surprised how much pull an E-8 or E-9 has in the military.
the ship's* equipment
*skiff
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.
Vote for my guy, trust me bro!
crux of the US politics
The weakest link is always the lowest common denominator. I'm pretty sure that the other armies around the world have their fair share of idiots too.
Ya mean like ppl using classified information in World of Tanks forums to prove a point... more than once?
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.
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
My ISP gave me an access point called CSP218891F Which I'm rather worried about.
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.
Apparently "STINKY" is the default StarLink SSID (Another Musk joke), so yeah...
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)
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.
Still, the ambassador had nothing on senior enlisted crew members of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, who didn't like the Navy's restriction of onboard Internet access. 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. Still, for half a year, life aboard the Manchester must have been one hell of a ride.
But wait! There's more!
Some McHale's Navy shit only with actual consequences.
The Rosenbergs died for less.
Heads should roll.
Just trying to play CoD with THE BOYS back home!! That and running their onlyfans pages. Come on, let them have their fun!
Reed to T'Pol: "I was always rather fond of the name Stinky".
I think the next step is to call for a criminal investigation into Elon Musk for installing spyware on a US Warship, and get him charged with espionage for the Russians or Chinese.
I mean I don't like the guy either but let's stick to reality shall we?
Literally the second paragraph in the article
Still, the ambassador had nothing on senior enlisted crew members of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, who didn't like the Navy's restriction of onboard Internet access. 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.
So this is one thing he is not responsible for.
#1 African scammer who would sell out "his country" for the price of X premium has a backdoor to all military infra, Xi is getting a chubby
he isn't African, he is a Canadian born in Southern Africa
You take that back, eh.
For most of the article, I was wondering why people cared so much about some random network, they'll go to the trouble of searching for and writing suggestions about it. People usually aren't that interested in the network infrastructure at government facilities.
That's some pretty significant context the writer didn't even know until informed by a reader.
must've been a Russian psyops. USA isn't that incompetent in itself. oh wait…
It doesn't stop wanks from blaming it on Putin, still. LMAO
Read trash comment -> lemmy ml, shocker
https://x.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1709606855234764936?lang=en
Russians are just congentially stupid, or drunk, at least this didn't have any actual cost.
