this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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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.

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[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 150 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Good that’s a severe risk she* put everyone and the ship in. It was 17 officers in total and they attempted cover up

[–] puppy@lemmy.world 46 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)
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[–] Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de 117 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

First off, not an officer, a high ranking enlisted(E-8) personal was the culprit.

Second, she was a Information systems technician. She literally dealt with making sure communication was safe and secure.

I know congress has to be involved to knock her down below E-7 but they need to get on that.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 41 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

So she was an NCO and the writter was clueless. Ok.

And for that kind of opsec fuckup there really shouldn't there be discharge/prison time ?

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If the military imprisoned soldiers for being dumb, there would be no military.

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[–] n2burns@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

First off, not an officer, a high ranking enlisted(E-8) personal was the culprit.

Typically, anything E-4 or higher is considered a Non-Commisioned Officer.

EDIT further clarification: from my experience in the Canadian Army, what "Officers" means depends on context. Most often (and what !Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de probably meant) it means just Commissioned Officers. Other times, it's anyone in leadership, including NCOs.

[–] MetaCubed@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I totally understand where you're coming from. It's absolutely not uncommon to casually refer to high-rank NCOs as Officers (in Canada at least)

[Source: Family in CAF and RCMP]

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[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 96 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

How the fuck did she think this was anything close to a good idea?! This shows a profound lack of good judgement, and a huge failure of both respect for her job and for the safety of the crew.

[–] BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 43 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah true, but tiktok

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 21 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Many people are bad at delayed gratification and long term thinking.

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[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 91 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Chiefs are enlisted, not officers. C'mon, AP, this is like day one stuff. Despite the name "petty officer" and term "non-commissioned officer", there's no such thing as an "enlisted officer".

Also, "stinky" was the default SSID on Starlink, not a secret code word they came up with.

[–] DaGeek247@fedia.io 23 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Was gonna call you out for messing that up; warrant officers are officers, they just started out as enlisted men.

Then I realized we are talking navy ranks, and my best knowledge of that is from halo.

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Enlisted dont even have ranks, they have rates. They also have a rating, which refers to your role, I.e the job you do.

[–] Ithral@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

Yes rates are used most of the time in forms of address. However you do have a rank, for example E-5 or Petty Officer Second Class. However when addressing enlisted you'd usually say something like CTM2, IT2 etc... Until you hit chief then you are just called Chief, or senior if you are a Senior Chief, Master Chief doesn't get abbreviated to Master for obvious reasons, and MCPON is usually referred to as "mic pon" phonetically for Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy.

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[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago

The link below this parent with the pics shows tweets from Musk saying the point of naming it STINKY is to encourage customizing the name. I guess not everyone knew their LinkSys ID # in the dorms and/or doesn't immediately turn their wifi into a pun. Just in case anyone else found that default name to be suspicious. They're supposedly now back to just starlink

[–] nednobbins@lemm.ee 35 points 3 weeks ago (16 children)

There's a much bigger story here.
Think about how hard it was to discover this access point. Even after it was reported and there was a known wi-fi network and the access point was known to be on a single ship, it took the Navy months to find it.

Starlink devices are cheap and it will be nearly impossible to detect them at scale. That means that anyone can get around censors. If the user turns off wi-fi, they'll be nearly impossible to detect. If they leave wi-fi on in an area with a lot of wi-fi networks it will also be nearly impossible to detect. A random farmer could have Starlink in their hut. A dissident (of any nation) could hide the dish behind their toilet.

As competing networks are launched, users will be able to choose from the least restricted network for any given topic.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

But why was it hard? Surely they're accessing it w/ wifi, and scanning for wi-fi networks really isn't that hard. A military ship should have a good handle on what networks they expect, and they should be able to easily triangulate where the signal is coming from.

Also, military ships should have really strict accounting for what is brought on board. A Starlink receiver isn't particularly small, and it should be plainly obvious to security when that comes on-board.

I think it's awesome that Starlink is so accessible for the average joe, but that's a completely different topic than what's allowed on military property. This sounds like a pretty big, embarassing security fail for the US military, and more people than this individual should be reprimanded, if not fired.

[–] nednobbins@lemm.ee 11 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

The original article goes into more detail https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/09/03/how-navy-chiefs-conspired-to-get-themselves-illegal-warship-wi-fi/

It sounds like there were over 15 people in on the scheme. At some point people noticed that there was some wi-fi network called "STINKY" and rumors started circulating about it. It took a while for those rumors to reach senior command. Then they changed the name to make it look like a printer, which further delayed the investigation.

It doesn't look like they actually scanned for the access point. I suspect that's because it would be hard on a ship. All the metal would reflect signals and give you a ton of false readings.

They only eventually found it when a technician was installing an authorized system (Starshield seems to be the version of Starlink approved for military use) and they discovered the unauthorized Starlink equipment.

The Starlink receivers have gotten fairly small. It seems like that was pretty easy to hide among all the other electronics on the ship.

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[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 weeks ago

It was the Chief of the ship who installed it. She was the highest ranked enlisted person on the ship. She would have the access and ability to get just about anything on board that she wanted. The fact she was able to is easy to see. The fact the she was willing to and has obtained such a high rank is pretty impressive (and stupid).

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 7 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

The degree of incompetence needed for SIGINT/ELINT operations to fail to discover such a transceiver for 6+ months strains credibility.

I'm guessing this is a ruse to convince adversaries that the Navy can't detect Starlink transceivers even when they are aboard their own ships. This is much more likely to be disinformation intended to drive adversaries to use Starlink than it is to be a legitimate failure of intelligence gathering.

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[–] espentan@lemmy.world 33 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I'd be curious to see the dish install. It's hard to imagine how someone would think it'd go unnoticed, on a warship, no less.

[–] Volkditty@lemmy.world 37 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)
[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 29 points 3 weeks ago (10 children)

Ship officers heard the scuttlebutt about STINKY, of course, and they began asking questions and doing inspections, but they never found the concealed device. On August 18, though, a civilian worker from the Naval Information Warfare Center was installing an authorized SpaceX "Starshield" device and came across the unauthorized SpaceX device hidden on the weatherdeck.

Heh.

[–] teft@lemmy.world 24 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

Why the F were they broadcasting the SSID on a "secret" wifi network? That's just asking to get caught. If they had hidden the SSID most people would never have known about it.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 37 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You're expecting intelligence and competence from these people? The ones who thought it would be a good idea to violate a half dozen regulations to even install it in the first place?

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[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 26 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Extra fun is that the head chief never gave anyone else the password. She logged into each of the other chiefs devices.

She could have 100% also typed in the ssid at the time. It would have taken almost no extra effort.

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

You can view WiFi passwords for saved networks on pretty much every OS. There's no reason to be secretive about entering WiFi passwords, at least to the people whose devices you're entering the password on.

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[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ugh, Elon continues to have the absolute most inane sense of humor on the planet. I'm not sure if it's him or Zuck who are more clearly aliens wearing human skin

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's Zuck. Elon is just a perpetual 13yo. TBH, he's not entirely unlike Peter Pan (from the book).

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[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 9 points 3 weeks ago

I tough they changed the name to stinky for the lulz but it was the default name imposed by the childbrain. Amazing opsec.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 21 points 3 weeks ago

Multiple people were involved, and it was probably mounted in a location where other people were unlikely to know that it was out of place.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yeah, same. It's not like there were windows they could point it out of, so it would have to be exposed and somehow disguised.

Lol, in college, some guy on my floor wasn't happy with the dorm's cable TV because it didn't have NFL Sunday Ticket and brought his DirecTV dish/receiver from home. His room was facing the right way, so he was able to set the dish up in the room next to the window. This sortof reminds me of that but without the national security implications.

[–] nobleshift@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (7 children)

Imagine being such a selfish piece (s) of shit that you put the operational security of every single one of your crewmates in jeopardy ~~for social media~~.

Every single person involved in this needs to stand tall before the man.

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[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 weeks ago (10 children)

Serious question: Was this actually a likely or possible security risk?

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 44 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 10 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

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

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[–] Cagi@lemmy.ca 21 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

When they say "lost her job", does that mean a dishonorable discharge?

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 17 points 3 weeks ago

That could come later.

For now it just means reassigned to a desk somewhere not too far from MPs.

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