A group of Navy sailors secretly used Starlink to check sports scores, social media and watch movies. They hid it from rank-and-file.

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.

  • @[email protected]English
    7•3 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•3 months ago

      strains credibility

      Not sure why.
      Security professionals are constantly complaining about insiders violating security policies for stupid reasons.
      Security publications and declassified documents are full of breaches that took way too long to discover.

      The Navy may have great security protocols but it’s full of humans that make mistakes. As they say, if you invent a foolproof plan, the universe will invent a better fool.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•3 months ago

        Ok, so this is a bit different from taping your password to your monitor. Security has a problem with you doing that, but unless they come to your workstation, they have no way of knowing that you do this.

        ELINT is kinda like a security camera, but instead of seeing lights, it sees transmitters. You know the frequencies of the communications transmitters on Navy ships, let’s say they are analogous to blue lights. You know the frequencies of their radars, let’s say they are green. During normal operation, you’re expecting to see blue and green “lights” from your ship, and the other ships in your task force.

        Starlink does not operate on the same frequencies as comms and radar. The “light” it emits is bright red, kinda like the blinking lights you see on cell towers at night.

        So, you’re sitting at the security desk, monitoring your camera feeds… And you just don’t notice a giant red blinky light, strong enough to be seen from space, on the ship next to you in formation?

        You’re telling me that this warship never ran any EMCON drills, shutting off all of the “lights” it knows about, and looking to see if any shipboard transmitters remain unsecured?

        You’re right, I would expect users to bend and break unmonitored security protocols from time to time. I expect them to write down their password. I expect them to share their password, communicating it over insecure networks that aren’t monitored by the security department. But operating a Starlink transmitter is basically equivalent to having the Goodyear blimp orbit your office building, projecting your password on its side for everyone to see.

        The idea that ELINT operators missed seeing it for this long doesn’t seem likely.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•3 months ago

          Look at what her rank was, she was Chief of Ship. She also lied about what it was and was allowing other enlisted, likely sigint/elint to use the starlink for streaming away from port.

          Simple low level fuckery on a naval vessel. The softest part of security are the squishy humans.

          • @[email protected]English
            1•3 months ago

            Ok, I don’t think you read what I wrote.

            Everytime you read “Starlink”, I want you to think about a flashing anti-collision beacon on a radio tower. Because that is what a Starlink transceivers looks like to every ELINT operator aboard, and on every nearby ship. Imagine a ship with a giant red blinky light on it, because that’s what an ELINT technician would be seeing.

            She would have had to have recruited every ELINT technician and supervisor aboard every vessel they sailed with to make this happen.