Howard Altman, Joseph Trevithick
As the Independence class Littoral Combat Ship USS Manchester plied the waters of the West Pacific in 2023, it had a totally unauthorized Starlink satellite internet antenna secretly installed on top of the ship by its gold crew’s chiefs. That antenna and associated WiFi network were set up without the knowledge of the ship’s captain, according to a fantastic Navy Times story about this absolutely bizarre scheme. It presented such a huge security risk, violating the basic tenets of operational security and cyber hygiene, that it is hard to believe.
It was all so that the chiefs on the ship’s ‘gold crew’ (the LCS alternates between two crews) could check sports scores, text home, and stream movies, investigators learned, according to Navy Times. However, that required a conspiracy involving gathering funds, purchasing the service, and installing the antenna on the 0-5 weatherdeck where it couldn’t easily be seen.
The chief who set up the WiFi network, dubbed “STINKY,” definitely knew better. Then-Command Senior Chief Grisel 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, according to her biography,” Navy Times noted. She was later convicted at court-martial earlier this year on charges related to the scheme.
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