In 2023, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a Starlink terminal to the "O-5 level weatherdeck" of a US warship.
They called the resulting Wi-Fi network "STINKY"—and when officers on the ship heard rumors and began asking questions, the leader of the scheme brazenly lied about it. Then, when exposed, she went so far as to make up fake Starlink usage reports suggesting that the system had only been accessed while in port, where cybersecurity and espionage concerns were lower.
Rather unsurprisingly, the story ends badly, with a full-on Navy investigation and court-martial.
Sailors on the ship then began finding the STINKY network and asking questions about it.
Oh, c’mon. it is trivial to make an SSID “hidden” for any networking tech that you have administrative control over. That way, only those “in the know” will know the SSID name to type in, in order to access said wireless network. It would not be “discoverable” by standard wireless-connectivity gear such as the default wifi interface in mobile phones.
Hidden WiFi networks are not actually hidden in the literal sense. They still broadcast beacons that your wifi chip will see as basically “hidden network beacon lives here”. Your network connect interface just decides not to show you a list with a bunch of useless “(hidden)” entries you can’t do anything with.
Also, when a new client wants to connect to the hidden network, the first thing it does is broadcast an unencrypted message saying “HEY, I’M LOOKING FOR [hidden network name]” so it’s completely trivial to unveil the name of hidden networks given enough time.
That’s why I put that term in quotes, and was specific about default networking interfaces. I didn’t go into detail because that confuses a lot of people.
Source: working with wireless networks professionally for pretty much the last quarter century.
Like, it wouldn't be patched into anything official
But it means Musk knew where that ship was 24/7, and I'm pretty sure that's why Ukraine's military stopped using it. Musk tipped off Putin to troop movements.
The reason I think is because any unofficial and potentially unsecured communications access point seems like a vulnerability. If some moron posts a picture using that unofficial access point I’d be worried it could be traced to the ship’s location.
Can't speak to starlink specifically, but I know some shittier router brands would often reset to factory defaults every time you updated the firmware. Can easily see starlink doing that with a pushed firmware with the expectation some additional cell phone app would restore the correct settings.
So they very well might have turned off broadcasting but it got popped back on while they were on shift and it was detected.
And I'm sure whoever put it there faced way more harsher penalties than a certain someone who willfully hid highly classified documents in his bathroom for months and lied about it to investigators.
Still, the ambassador had nothing on senior enlisted crew members of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, who didn't like the Navy's restriction of onboard Internet access. In 2023, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a Starlink terminal to the "O-5 level weatherdeck" of a US warship.
They called the resulting Wi-Fi network "STINKY"—and when officers on the ship heard rumors and began asking questions, the leader of the scheme brazenly lied about it. Then, when exposed, she went so far as to make up fake Starlink usage reports suggesting that the system had only been accessed while in port, where cybersecurity and espionage concerns were lower.
Rather unsurprisingly, the story ends badly, with a full-on Navy investigation and court-martial. Still, for half a year, life aboard the Manchester must have been one hell of a ride.
The chiefs found that the Wi-Fi signal coming off the Starlink satellite transceiver couldn't cover the entire ship, so during a stop in Pearl Harbor, they bought "signal repeaters and cable" to extend coverage.
can we just fucking all take a break for a month? just have things go to being boring?
I attended a fucking ethics of ai talk at my work, only to run into a fucking knockoff nazi complaining about the founding fathers images being generated with black people, and talking about how silicon valley is too left wing.
either you're so stupid that you don't understand it's a fucking alt-right dog whistle, or you're a fucking nazi who gets very, very upset if you see a black person in any context. Either way, just shut the fuck up.
The fact that they didn't even try to hide their ssid (or at least, the report doesn't say they did) shows how stupid people can be with cybersecurity.
Between Trump stealing national security secrets and shit like this, it's honestly shocking the USA hasn't already become a full-fledged fascist hell-hole. It's currently only half-fledged.
But seriously, it must be fucking child's play for other nations to spy on us with dumb fucking shit like this happening.
Hey, give us a chance. We have another election right around the corner and things are really looking good for a solid commitment to fully flegged hell-holism.
For most of the article, I was wondering why people cared so much about some random network, they'll go to the trouble of searching for and writing suggestions about it. People usually aren't that interested in the network infrastructure at government facilities.
That's some pretty significant context the writer didn't even know until informed by a reader.