After Seeing Wi-Fi Network Named “STINKY,” Navy Found Hidden Starlink Dish on US Warship
Freeman writes:
It's no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. The records retention! The security! So government workers occasionally take IT into their own hands with creative but, err, unauthorized solutions.
For instance, a former US Ambassador to Kenya in 2015 got in trouble after working out of an embassy compound bathroom-the only place where he could use his personal computer (!) to access an unsecured network (!!) that let him log in to Gmail (!!!), where he did much of his official business-rules and security policies be damned.
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.
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The Navy Times has all the new and gory details, and you should read their account, because they went to the trouble of using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to uncover the background of this strange story.
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the chiefs don't appear to have taken amazing security precautions once everything was installed. For one thing, they called the network "STINKY." For another, they were soon adding more gear around the ship, which was bound to raise further questions. 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.Sailors on the ship then began finding the STINKY network and asking questions about it.
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Ship officers heard the scuttlebutt about STINKY, of course, and they began asking questions and doing inspections, but they never found the concealed device. On August 18, though, a civilian worker from the Naval Information Warfare Center was installing an authorized SpaceX "Starshield" device and came across the unauthorized SpaceX device hidden on the weatherdeck.
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All of the chiefs who used, paid for, or even knew about the system without disclosing it were given "administrative nonjudicial punishment at commodore's mast," said Navy Times.[Command Senior Chief Grisel] Marrero herself was relieved of her post last year, and she pled guilty during a court-martial this spring.
So there you go, kids: two object lessons in poor decision-making. Whether working from an embassy bathroom or the deck of a littoral combat ship, if you're a government employee, think twice before giving in to the sweet temptation of unsecured, unauthorized wireless Internet access.
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