Technology

59377 readers

4289 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

665

Navy officer lost job for secretly installing internet on warship to check social media (fortune.com)

submitted 2 months ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world

148 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There are regular unprotected Internet channels, and then there are secure networks like SIPRNet. Devices must not arbitrarily cross from one to the other. That's where a leak can happen. That's one thing I learned working for a company with an Army contract 20 years ago. Once a device was set up for secure access on the military network, our policy was to never have it touch the civilian Internet again. It had to be 100% verified destroyed at the end of its lifetime. I don't know details of how they handle it these days with mobile devices everywhere.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Doesn't really change much.

You NEVER connect to sensitive resources via wifi. Different orgs and levels have different rules about whether a device capable of wifi can even be in the same room, but the key is to not connect it to the secure network. This is commonly referred to as "an airgap". And if you are wondering how different ships can communicate with each other and The US? Don't ask questions!

For less sensitive resources? YOLO that shit. But it is also incredibly trivial to set up a security model where users cannot connect to arbitrary networks.

So StinkyNet would, presumably, only be usable by personal devices. Which should have absolutely nothing sensitive on them to begin with. And if anything on any of the ship's sensitive networks was even able to connect to StinkyNet then... the Navy done fucked up.

Which... might explain the rapid action to punish those who violated policy.

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Wow that was super interesting! Thanks!