399 points

That seems like a significant security risk

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248 points

Probably not for the reason you think.

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.

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123 points

It’s emmitting radio signals that an enemy could use to help locate the ship.

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18 points

What?

Surface ships are in constant communication with stuff…

You can’t just find a signal in the middle of the ocean. Musk can find a starlink signal tho, because he can see what Starlink connects to and it’s gps location.

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55 points

Musk tipped off Putin to troop movements

Wait he did? Can you provide a source for this? I can only find information about him stopping starlink service in crimea

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25 points

They can’t, because it doesn’t exist.

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15 points

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.

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13 points

Everybody knew were the ship was, because at that time star link usage by area was shown publicly. There was map online that showed all clients online.

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11 points

It wouldn’t be… Until it is.

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11 points

Yeah with how many leaks come from war thunder players… lol

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-24 points

No it just wouldn’t.

Like, are you imagining a modern US warship doesn’t have internet 24/7?

This was for porn and maybe streaming services and social media, but mostly porn.

It wasn’t for any official use, because they have that covered.

You’re acting like surface ships are submarines…

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6 points

When did they stop using starlink?

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8 points

They didn’t, the commenter is making things up.

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3 points

It was exactly the reason I was thinking

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-4 points

Musk tipped off Putin to troop movements.

I’m sorry, this made me laugh. Is that a widely accepted conspiracy theory in this community? That Elon Musk is a Russian spy?

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11 points

Did you miss the part where he sent a militarized Cyber Truck to a Russian war criminal, or are you conveniently ignoring it?

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2 points

I feel like every military is full of technological babies acting out security theatre with each other while everything is totally hacked.

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198 points

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.

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21 points

Just like a certain someone who had classified documents that they weren’t even supposed to have without a handler!

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7 points

According to Navy Times, reduction in rank. According to my experience, likely going to be told they can’t re-enlist after the end of their current term. Likely shipped stateside and in charge of mowing the lawn somewhere.

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167 points
*

The source story is worth a read.

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

Incredible.

she soon changed the “STINKY” Wi-Fi network name to another moniker that looked like a wireless printer — even though no such general-use wireless printers were present on the ship

Why not just switch off broadcasting the SSID?

[The CO and XO] then conducted another sweep inside the ship. Although the network that appeared to be a wireless printer appeared on their personal devices during their search, neither made additional inquiries regarding that network

No-one’s coming out of this looking good.

Marrero’s secret Starlink dish was removed the same day, and Marrero told another unidentified crew member the next day that it was authorized for in-port use — prompting sailors to re-install the illegal Starlink.

It just keeps going!

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52 points

To be fair, if the lead NCO of a unit is just going to flat out lie then a lot of people are going to believe it. I can’t imagine being a lower NCO or enlisted and thinking command actually authorized the chiefs to break operational security for entertainment, but only them. Every chief in that crew should be busted and flagged against promotion again. The investigation was completely right to say if they didn’t know, they should have.

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42 points

I may have missed it in this article, though I believe I read elsewhere, that she got busted down one rank and that’s it. I know military in general is having retention and recruitment issues, but to me this is more than just a busting down offense. That the senior enlisted on a ship would so nonchalantly disregard OPSEC demonstrates either a clear lack of understanding, or worse, something more nefarious.

We saw a naval officer relieved of command for having the scope backwards on his rifle. This, to me, rises to a much higher level.

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98 points

We saw a naval officer relieved of command for having the scope backwards on his rifle.

Well in that case, it was just a matter of bad optics.

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18 points

There’s a lot of punishment that doesn’t show up in the top line in the military. She may be flagged to lose her security clearance, (dishonesty, incompetence, and corruption) which would be the end of her career. They may also outright flag her as not eligible for re-enlistment. She’s certainly not ever going to live that down and it’s not a counseling form that disappears in six months. I’d be very surprised if she ever promotes again.

All that said, where I was, in the infantry, lying to your commander like that, while endangering the unit, would be either an Other Than Honorable discharge or a Big Chicken Dinner. (Bad Conduct discharge, do not pass go, do not bother with the VA, do not collect retirement, hope future employers never ask about your discharge)

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6 points

Yeah and that destroyer CO relieved of command for letting his sailors get treatment for COVID (before we had a vaccine) but this sailor just gets busted a rank for breaching OPSEC?! It’s not like she did it for fun, she’s probably compromised by some foreign actor. I’ve heard stories of the military making dumb decisions but damn.

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17 points

First thought I had after read through, how much did that masters cost and you didn’t learn that you can turn off the broadcast name so only people who know it’s there can connect? Probably not even a real degree, freakonomjcs did an episode maybe 10 years ago that said probably 5% of degrees are fake, bet it’s 20% now, lying is culturally through the roof.

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10 points

MBAs should be renamed Master’s in Bullshit Administration.

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1 point

Mostly Bad Answers

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8 points
*

Having an understanding of technology generically and knowing how specific technologies work are vastly different things. The first takes great effort. The second is done by a nerd who can’t sleep and is curious. If you didn’t do the second then you don’t know anything about that specific thing.

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6 points

Exactly, and very often the only difference between BS level courses and MS level were the need to write extra papers and get better grades. And almost all of it was theoretical.

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3 points

I have a general understanding of tech without a degree tho.

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6 points

The levels of incompetence.

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144 points
*

What’s better is that, thanks to Elon Musk, “STINKY” is the default name for its Starlink wifi. These people didn’t even change that.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-starlink-wifi-stinky

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42 points

Don’t worry! I’m sure the default username and password didn’t get changed either.

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7 points

They did, because they were charging people for access to it.

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25 points

He’s so weirdly childish.

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12 points
*

He’s so weirdly childish.

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15 points

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.

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5 points

Nah, Starlink doesn’t reset the Wi-Fi SSID for a firmware update.

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1 point

Hmm I got Starlink earlier this year and I don’t remember it having a default. I think it asked me to set the ssid immediately.

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108 points

To make matters even worse…

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.

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18 points

This many chiefs (not rank-and-file, chiefs), putting this much effort into breaking Navy protocol, together, is crazy. And for what? Memes?

I know deployment at sea can be boring but Jesus fucking Christ, read a damn book or something.

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