A U.S. Navy chief who wanted the internet so she and other enlisted officers could scroll social media, check sports scores and watch movies while deployed had an unauthorized Starlink satellite dish installed on a warship and lied to her commanding officer to keep it secret, according to investigators.
Internet access is restricted while a ship is underway to maintain bandwidth for military operations and to protect against cybersecurity threats.
The Navy quietly relieved Grisel Marrero, a command senior chief of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, in August or September 2023, and released information on parts of the investigation this week.
Serious question: Was this actually a likely or possible security risk?
Yes, it is a likely risk. Having an unauthorized broadcast signal is a security risk because it can be used to locate and target the ship, allows for crew to communicate with the outside world without the oversight that they would normally have, and is outside the control of the ship’s command.
There are many valid reasons for the military to be limited to authorized channels for communication.
And we know that Elmo probably reports directly to Putin, insane that they got such a highly placed asset who’s also the richest man in the world
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield
except SpaceX is selling for all we know to be military starlink with extra capability to the US goverment.
He doesn’t. He may serve Russian interests at times, but he’s not a direct report the way Tim Pool and many of our government elected officials are.
I thought Tim Pool was a victim?
Will he have to give back that skatepark that he stole? (serious questions)
Very yes. They could reveal their location for starters, which could spoil a mission and put lives at risk, but if they use the same device on both this and the ships network, you risk compromising the ship’s network or even the Navy itself, giving our enemies all kinds of sensitive info.
We are in the midst of a world war being waged in cyberspace and the US is losing. Incidents like this are a genuine threat.
I was assuming they had their own hidden network going. I can’t imagine they would be dumb enough to mess with the existing ship network.
There are regular unprotected Internet channels, and then there are secure networks like SIPRNet. Devices must not arbitrarily cross from one to the other. That’s where a leak can happen. That’s one thing I learned working for a company with an Army contract 20 years ago. Once a device was set up for secure access on the military network, our policy was to never have it touch the civilian Internet again. It had to be 100% verified destroyed at the end of its lifetime. I don’t know details of how they handle it these days with mobile devices everywhere.
Doesn’t really change much.
You NEVER connect to sensitive resources via wifi. Different orgs and levels have different rules about whether a device capable of wifi can even be in the same room, but the key is to not connect it to the secure network. This is commonly referred to as “an airgap”. And if you are wondering how different ships can communicate with each other and The US? Don’t ask questions!
For less sensitive resources? YOLO that shit. But it is also incredibly trivial to set up a security model where users cannot connect to arbitrary networks.
So StinkyNet would, presumably, only be usable by personal devices. Which should have absolutely nothing sensitive on them to begin with. And if anything on any of the ship’s sensitive networks was even able to connect to StinkyNet then… the Navy done fucked up.
Which… might explain the rapid action to punish those who violated policy.
Wow that was super interesting! Thanks!
I don’t know the exact details of their setup but I would imagine if they have phones on the ship there’s a network they can connect to on the ship that’s not their starlink internet.
Aside from being able to possibly identify the starlink waveforms with passive RF surveillance or being able to identify the location of the ship through hacking spacex or their satellites, if they went back and forth between being connected on their phones to the ship network and the internet, their phones could have been compromised, leaving the possibility also of them being a perfect pivot point for hackers interested in exfilling important government secrets.
Overall just very bad opsec for a ship and definitely not a good idea.
Important government secrets will be strictly separated from personal/civilian devices. The only classified information being transmitted by personal devices is the location and human knowledge of the owners.
Do we know these are civilian phones? My assumption was these are not civilian phones because why let them bring their phones if there’s no cell network to operate on and no internet.
Edit: You might be right it mentions they can get Internet when it’s not underway so maybe they have their civilian phones. I am not in the navy so I don’t know the procedures. Still bad cuz of the other reasons plus some about giving them the ability to target those networks from a deauth’d perspective but yeah the last reason might not be the case.
It wouldn’t shock me tho if they still had access to some like nonclassified but controlled info too on their phones.
Yes, right up until someone plugs in the wrong cable, sends an email to the wrong person, or plugs the wrong hard drive into a system. Then your phone rings and you have to talk to people you never want to talk to.
It was on its own hidden network, if it was on the existing network it would have been discovered a LOT sooner
Itself? Not really.
If a ship is close enough to pick up an SSID they are close enough for any number of other methods. And starlink is theoretically trusted by the us government.
But if they were actually locked down for a real mission (not the stuff you do to make people feel important) then we could have seen the same kinds of telegram leaks Russian has near constantly.
The GPS is recording where they are, which can report to things like fitness applications. These are not so secure and can identify where they are, have been, and likely will go next.
And if there is not immense amounts of “do not have a fucking fitbit” levels of warnings and policies, that is a problem for the US Navy itself. Because a lot of those will also cache data and send the last N days once they get back to shore.
Again, unless they were ACTUALLY doing sensitive stuff (rather than just “sensitive by default” to protect Leadership™ from having to think and make decisions) then we are looking at the same problem the russians have in Ukraine.
Otherwise? It is a policy violation, not a security violation, in and of itself. What people then share on social media is on them.
And a friendly reminder: Policy is made to minimize the risk of a security issue and you should follow it (if only because you are paid to). But it is VERY important to understand what you are actually protecting yourself from so that you understand if policy is even doing anything. Otherwise you get complete insanity as more and more bureaucrats and Leaders™ add bullshit so they can get a bonus for being “security minded”.
Anything Elon Musk can track is probably a security risk until he stops being the most divorced person to ever exist.
*until he stops to exist
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Yes. If it became connected to any ship network, that network is now on the Internet and not protected by the regular firewall.
I’d imagine the receiver’s location could possibly be tracked, but the bigger thing of restricting communications to officials channels while on duty is to ensure anyone on the ship doesn’t let slip sensitive information that could compromise the mission or ship’s safety.