“STINKY”
What happened
Various officers and other members of staff on the US Navy ship USS Manchester have been fired or demoted after a rogue Wi-Fi network was discovered on their ship. It was found that a ring of senior officers had set up a Wi-Fi network called “STINKY”, that other senior officers were able to buy into and use at their own leisure. But why has this been found to be so serious?
Why it is important
Open Source Intelligence, known as OSINT, is the process of perfomring a cyber investigation using publically available information. This often includes social media sites, but can stretch to a wide variety of sites and source. Take for example this image of John Mcafee, who was on the run when news company Vice posted it:
Image Source - WIRED
Vice wanted to show off that they knew where Mcafee was hiding. But what they forgot to do was remove the metadata from the image, which included the co-ordinates of exactly where the photo was taken. It was this OSINT that allowed law enforcement to catch up with Mcafee and apprehend him.
A rogue Wi-Fi network would allow the office of USS Manchester to leave a trail of OSINT for adversaries to follow. Maybe they posted an image on a website without removing the metadata. An adversary would be able to grab this information, use their LinkedIn to determine which ship they are on, and plot it’s exact location on the map. On top of this, having an unofficial and potentially insecure system running on the ship could open the systems up to a whole host of new attacks, that would otherwise be regulated by the ship’s existing systems.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading
“Grisel Marrero, a former information systems technician, and senior leaders paid $2,800 for the Starlink High Performance Kit and had it installed on the warship”