“Stinky”: U.S. Navy Senior Enlisted Sailors Installed Outlaw Starlink Network on Warship
September 4th, 2024How desperate is the U.S. Navy for personnel that these people weren’t thrown in jail or kicked out!?
Besides installing the Starlink system and lying about it, to boost wifi coverage around the ship, they installed wifi range extenders!
I wonder how many heads exploded in ONI/NSA/DIA when they heard about this one?
Most consumer grade wifi range extenders are made in China by Chinese companies and running closed source blobs. Here’s an example of what to expect from such devices:
…suspicious backdoors have been discovered in a Chinese-made Jetstream router, sold exclusively at Walmart as their new line of “affordable” wifi routers. This backdoor would allow an attacker the ability to remotely control not only the routers, but also any devices connected to that network.
Via: NavyTimes:
Today’s Navy sailors are likely familiar with the jarring loss of internet connectivity that can come with a ship’s deployment.
For a variety of reasons, including operational security, a crew’s internet access is regularly restricted while underway, to preserve bandwidth for the mission and to keep their ship safe from nefarious online attacks.
But the senior enlisted leaders among the littoral combat ship Manchester’s gold crew knew no such privation last year, when they installed and secretly used their very own Wi-Fi network during a deployment, according to a scathing internal investigation obtained by Navy Times.
As the ship prepared for a West Pacific deployment in April 2023, the enlisted leader onboard conspired with the ship’s chiefs to install the secret, unauthorized network aboard the ship, for use exclusively by them.
So while rank-and-file sailors lived without the level of internet connectivity they enjoyed ashore, the chiefs installed a Starlink satellite internet dish on the top of the ship and used a Wi-Fi network they dubbed “STINKY” to check sports scores, text home and stream movies.
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The enjoyment of those wireless creature comforts by enlisted leaders aboard the ship carried serious repercussions for the security of the ship and its crew.
“The danger such systems pose to the crew, the ship and the Navy cannot be understated,” the investigation notes.
Led by the senior enlisted leader of the ship’s gold crew, then-Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero, the effort roped in the entire chiefs mess by the time it was uncovered a few months later.
Marrero was relieved in late 2023 after repeatedly misleading and lying to her ship’s command about the Wi-Fi network, and she was convicted at court-martial this spring in connection to the scheme.
She was sentenced to a reduction in rank to E-7 after the trial and did not respond to requests for comment for this report.
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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, according to her biography.
The investigation notes that she should have known better.
“Her time in service and specialized training makes it clear the member knew or should have known the risks associated with an unauthorized Wi-Fi system,” the investigation states.
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After Manchester got underway from San Diego, Marrero and the chiefs soon realized the Wi-Fi signal didn’t cover all areas of the ship, so the senior chief purchased signal repeaters and cable at the Navy Exchange store in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, during a port visit in late April or early May, according to the investigation.
