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.
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.
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.
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.
So it’s collusion by the people who should be monitoring for such things? Or just collusion by people in some position of power, but who aren’t in charge of network security? I don’t know much about the positions these people held.
Anyone directly involved should certainly be considered for disciplinary action, but there should be more safeguards here.
The original article said the Navy hadn’t provided all the details.
It looks like those 15+ people included at least one person who should have been monitoring for such things and a bunch of people who wanted to follow sports.
They didn’t give the password to most of the crew and they tried to keep the commanding officers in the dark. It sounds like everyone involved faced disciplinary action.
It looks like that’s an administrative process. https://jagdefense.com/practice-areas/non-judicial-punishmentarticle-15/ Potential penalties are listed near the bottom.
The person the article is about was a Chief, and the highest ranked enlisted person on the ship. She would have the respect of all the enlisted members, as well as all the officers. She would be trusted to do her job and not do something stupid like this. She easily had the ability to do this, but you wouldn’t expect her to.
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).
Unless they just turn the satellites off over the country’s that don’t want them to avoid conflict or jam all signals because they do be that way.
We’re likely to see a variant of Moore’s law when it comes to satellites. Launch costs will keep going down. Right now we have Starlink with a working satellite internet system and China with a nascent one. As the costs come down we’ll likely see more and more countries, companies, organizations and individuals will be able to deploy their own systems.
A government would need to negotiate with every provider to get them to block signals over their country. Jamming is always hard. You could theoretically jam all communications or communications on certain frequency bands but it’s not clear how you would selectively jam satellite internet.
Kessler Syndrome trumps this application of Moore’s Law.
Maybe.
Kessler Syndrome doesn’t impact the ability to produce or launch satellites.
It impacts the ability of satellites to function in orbit but it’s not a fixed limit.
Humans have a pretty good track record of developing technologies that break through insurmountable theoretical barriers.
I’m surprised they didn’t hide the SSID… It’s likely nobody would have even found the network then.
The original article says there were over 15 people involved https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/09/03/how-navy-chiefs-conspired-to-get-themselves-illegal-warship-wi-fi/
With that many people, it’s only a matter of time before someone spills the beans.
There are several steps they could have taken to make it much harder to discover. I expect more and more people will take those steps and we’ll never hear about it.
Effectively they did through obfuscation. The Command Chief renamed it to look like their wireless printers. She did that because so many more junior people (relative to the Chief’s Mess) complained that the officers tried to check (with their phones) for some wifi Internet. They couldn’t find it because they thought it was a printer. The Command Chief is obviously trusted since she’s the most senior enlisted but she’s also the one that lead the entire scheme. When asked directly by the Commander, she denied it existed, so after not finding it, they just assumed it was a rumor. So, they had a ship-wide call and told everyone that there was no rogue Internet access point on the ship.
It took months because when a tech from a port they were at was installing a Starshield transceiver they physically saw the Starlink transceiver.
Oh, but there’s more. Starlink will be offering 5G via satellite soon.
I had (naively) hoped that starlink wouldn’t even need a license to operate in a specific country. When their satellites eventually fully communicate between them without ground station it becomes incredibly powerful. Sort of like one of those ancient world wonders. Technology now allows to live and work everywhere in the world or on the ocean in seasteads.
Unfortunately it’s owned by greedy oligarchs and the planned multiple constellations make a kessler syndrome more and more likely.