Well, that's one way to improve the Internet coverage on a Navy ship

Navy finds hidden Starlink dish on ship:

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.

They called the resulting Wi-Fi network "STINKY"—and when officers on the ship heard rumors and began asking questions, the leader of the scheme brazenly lied about it. Then, when exposed, she went so far as to make up fake Starlink usage reports suggesting that the system had only been accessed while in port, where cybersecurity and espionage concerns were lower.

Well, it is a pain in the rear end to get hooked up to SIPRnet ... 

Of course, there's been a general helping of Courts Martials to everyone involved.

And the funniest bit?  Elon Musk had Starlink change the default WiFi SSID to "Stinky" to encourage customers to change the damn defaults.

FBI security measures laughably weak

The FBI Inspector General has issued a scathing report about the Bureau's lackadaisical  attitude towards protecting sensitive data:

The FBI has made serious slip-ups in how it processes and destroys electronic storage media seized as part of investigations, according to an audit by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.

Drives containing national security data, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act information and documents classified as Secret were routinely unlabeled, opening the potential for it to be either lost or stolen, the report [PDF] addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray states.

...

The OIG report notes that it found boxes of hard drives and removable storage sitting open and unattended for "days or even weeks" because they were only sealed once the boxes were full. This potentially allows any of the 395 staff and contractors with access to the facility to have a rummage around.

There is a photo of the storage facility at the link, and it can only be described as horrifying.

I guess they are too busy spying on regime enemies to, you know, take security very seriously.

Security is hard, vol CCLVI

Act the first: Web Security organization suffers data breach:

A misconfigured MediaWiki web server allowed digital snoops to access members' resumes containing their personal details at the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Foundation.

...

"If you were an OWASP member from 2006 to around 2014 and provided your resume as part of joining OWASP, we advise assuming your resume was part of this breach," OWASP said in a Good Friday notification posted on its website.


"We recognize the significance of this breach, especially considering the OWASP Foundation's emphasis on cybersecurity," it added.

Yup.  This shows just how hard security is - OWASP is full to the brim with folks who (a) understand the importance of security, (b) know how to implement security (well, most of the time), and (c) have a lot of reputation at stake.  That reputation took a hit here.

Act the second: OPSEC is a bitch, even for secret squirrels:

Protecting your privacy online is hard. So hard, in fact, that even a top Israeli spy who managed to stay incognito for 20 years has found himself exposed after one basic error.

The spy is named Yossi Sariel allegedly heads Israel's Unit 8200 – a team of crack infosec experts comparable to the USA’s National Security Agency or the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters. Now he's been confirmed as the author of a 2021 book titled "The Human Machine Team" about the intelligence benefits of pairing human agents with advanced AI.

Sariel – who wrote the book under the oh-so-anonymous pen name “Brigadier General YS” – made a crucial mistake after an investigation by The Guardian which found an electronic copy of Sariel's book available on Amazon "included an anonymous email that can easily be traced to Sariel's name and Google account.”
...

Being outed after more than 20 years of anonymity isn't optimal for someone who's supposed to be a top spy

Yup.  And while it's tempting to roll your eyes and chorus Top. Men., remember that this is how they nabbed Ross Ulricht, a.k.a. The Dread Pirate Roberts from The Silk Road.

Yeah, OPSEC is a stone cold bitch of a problem.  You have to be right 100% of the time, and dropping that to 99.99% means that you lose.

The Woman In The Red Dress is not on your side

Life imitates art, and not in a good way.  An early scene from The Matrix shows a simulation that Morpheus uses to instruct Neo on how the "reality" he experiences is all a front, a distraction, a dangerous  manipulation:

Here we are 23 years later, and we find that social media is precisely what was shown in this scene:

Lots of people commented on it and how it looked as much like a Fed Boi false flag as the "Only Feds" one last September.  "Hello, fellow insurrectionists! I'm happy to meet you for the first time so we can all MAGA together. Let's ask the other MAGAs if they have forgotten their AR-15,'s and offer to give them some." 

...

It seems that there's some evidence being talked about that one of the main voices behind the "rally" on Twitter is an AI Bot, given an AI face blend (made up face) of a pretty young blond woman.  (Because that won't attract attention, right?) 

...  There’s an entire Twitter thread devoted to this young lady, who joined Twitter last month and whose existence can’t be verified anywhere else.  The guy who posted this picture says he did a search engine dive for the screen name she's using, “Sheryl Lewellen,” and can find only one other thing she supposedly posted: a GoFundMe to help her friend's dog get surgery.  

That's right, no Google history at all.  Two Twitter threads.

The only difference between her and the Woman In The Red Dress is that this bot seems to "like dogs".  23 years doesn't seem like a very long time for this sort of prediction to become apparent reality.  And so the next time someone on social media who tells you Hello, fellow insurrectionists! I'm happy to meet you for the first time so we can all MAGA together, remember one thing: there is no spoon.

Seriously.  There is no spoon, at least none that you'll get from someone on social media.  Especially if she's blonde.