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Navy officer lost job for secretly installing internet on warship to check social media (fortune.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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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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[–] someguy3 29 points 3 months ago (22 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 24 points 3 months ago (12 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

You can still see a WiFi network (and tell that it is unique from others) even when it’s not broadcasting SSID. It’s just one less piece of information available when someone is trying to access it.

Security through obscurity isn’t security, but it’ll keep neighborhood kids from trying to guess the password from across the street. On a warship? They’d have still seen it.

[–] kalleboo 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

On a warship? They’d have still seen it.

It took 6 months to discover, and even then it was by techs who went to physically install different hardware saw the dish hardware mounted to the ship. That's the real WTF here, how do these ships not have some kind of passive RF scanning/rogue AP detection??

It was seen by regular enlisted people who saw the network on their phones and left comment sheets asking WTF it was, but the person in question snatched up the papers before they got to the officers. If they had hidden the SSID, nobody would have seen it because nobody scans for hidden SSIDs on their phones.

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