Casual White House Starlink Use Is A Cybersecurity Nightmare, A Transparency Problem, And A Weird Marketing Stunt
from the but-her-emails dept
It’s best to view Elon Musk’s DOGE as an attack. While right wing propaganda (and gullible media outlets and politicians) frame DOGE as a “cost saving” effort at “improving government efficiency,” that’s just flimsy-ass cover for its real purpose: the dismantling of corporate oversight, environmental guard rails, consumer protection, civil rights, and the social safety net by weird zealots.
But DOGE is also just an incompetently run clown show.
There were already widespread concerns about Musk’s tween 4chan brats having widespread access to sensitive public information with no real oversight. But the randos that make up Trump and Musk’s rotating orbit of drooling sycophants also appear to be accessing this data using all manner of unsecured personal devices They couldn’t even launch the DOGE website competently with proper security.
Now there’s reporting out of the New York Times suggesting that Musk is casually integrating Starlink systems into the White House telecom network for no coherent reason outside of the fact it gives the illusion that it’s helping:
“Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is now accessible across the White House campus. It is the latest installation of the Wi-Fi network across the government since Mr. Musk joined the Trump administration as an unpaid adviser.”
The New York Times falsely calls this a “Wi-Fi” network, when Starlink is Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network. And in a complex as wired as the White House, there’s really no coherent reason to install it. The White House network is rife with gigabit capable fiber and gigabit-capable Wi-Fi that can far exceed anything Starlink delivers. Starlink would be a clearly inferior, slower, connectivity option.
According to the NY Times, one of Musk’s DOGE brats from X just decided one day to install a Starlink terminal on the White House roof, tripping security alarms and setting off a confrontation with Secret Service. All, purportedly, to “improve internet access” at probably one of the most well-connected buildings in the world.
There are only a few reasons to do this. One, is as a marketing stunt to help advertise Starlink as a miracle fix to a nonexistent problem. Two is to have a communications backchannel for stuff you don’t want tracked by any sort of White House network logging technologies. But even then, there are suggestions the Starlink traffic isn’t encrypted, creating a huge security risk:
“It was also unclear if Starlink communications were encrypted. At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.”
It’s very rare, weird, and very dangerous to just mindlessly intermingle a private, and potentially unencrypted telecom connectivity option with existing White House systems and workflows, as numerous IT folks on Bluesky were quick to note:
And slapping a nontransparent comms channel on the roof of the White House so you and your weird authoritarian buddies can giggle about your illegal and unpopular dismantling of government functions is pretty far afield from all the “full transparency” they promised.
Again, if you don’t have any respect for the function of governance, you’re not going to be particularly careful as you and your earlobe nibbling tweens go about dismantling it. And if you have no shame or ethics, you also think nothing of leveraging your unelected influence to use the White House as a glorified marketing stunt. And if you’re incompetent, you’re going to be incompetent.
All very much in character for the fake government agency run by the fake super-genius engineer tasked with fake innovation and efficiency improvements.
Filed Under: doge, elon musk, encryption, national security, privacy, satellite, security, starlink, white house, wireless
Companies: spacex, starlink
Comments on “Casual White House Starlink Use Is A Cybersecurity Nightmare, A Transparency Problem, And A Weird Marketing Stunt”
The White House wired networks probably block porn and games, so it may be insufficient for the twitler youth.
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This is my opinion as well. I know most government buildings, ones that have no reason to post to social media, tend to block all but needed websites. Most things are internal but there are some reasons for the government to access social media. When I worked for a government contractor, we had all sorts of issues where people couldn’t put in time sheets simply because they were on base or, some, on the ocean running trials.
DOGE is a monstrosity designed to siphon money into billionaires pockets, prioritizing Elon Musk. It does that by dismantling protections that prevent companies from screwing customers and directing government expenditures through their companies (or just outright making direct transfers via tax breaks without obligations or auditing attached or by defacing government incentives that should help the citizens).
Security and informed policy making are simply a non-issue for them.
It's even worse
Everyone who’s paying attention to their network/system logs has been observing a nonstop stream of malicious traffic from Starlink’s network since it went live. This tells us that Starlink personnel aren’t capable of managing their own operation (unsurprising) AND that it’s been successfully compromised at scale.
In other words, they just plugged the White House into a network that was already breached. And by doing so, they’ve made life much easier for every foreign intelligence service, even the ones that are underfunded/under-resourced, because they’ve lowered the security posture of the White House network to “script kiddie” level.
Re: that's before you consider
…that musk and the rest of the scriptkiddie schutzstaffel are doubtless pwned sixteen ways from Sunday by three or more nation-state security services.
The man is a blithering nitwit on his best day, and his pimply faced goons he’s tasked with implementing his PayPal putsch have zero idea how to deal with APTs, other than maybe to willingly sell what they know to them for btc
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That’s a really good point. The clueless morons working for Musk have absolutely no concept of operational security and have no doubt already been repeatedly compromised. It’s open season for even the lesser national intelligence agencies, who are probably vacuuming up every national secret the US has — if they can stop laughing long enough.
People are going to die as a direct result of this. Military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other personnel are going to be targeted. Given that some of the countries out there are strongly aligned with terrorist organizations, any intel they acquire is probably going to be shared with some of the worst and most violent people on the planet.
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https://bgpview.io/asn/14593#prefixes-v4
I haven’t seen issues from Starlink in a long time. They’re on my same “High-Abuse Hosts” blacklist along with Digital Ocean, Ponynet, and various other PITA colos.
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Threat From Within
The existing contractual internet system built into the White House is no doubt compromised by the 3-letter agencies. This is fine if you trust the deep state, but most Americans do not. Starlink, while not perfect, hasn’t been exposed to years of unfettered CIA access, so it’s definitely more secure.
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If you think the three letter agencies can’t spy on an unencrypted satellite link you are very much mistaken
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Thanks for the latest example of saying you have no idea how computer networking works without explicitly saying you have no idea how computer networking works.
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DOGE is the deep state.
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I have news for you, son: Musk and DOGE are the “deep state” now.
But I get it. They had to become the thing you (and they) believed existed in every presidential administration besides Trump’s so they could destroy the thing that didn’t exist. And if they happen to leak Social Security numbers, defund cancer research, and wreck any chance of the United States doing its part to save the environment…well, what’s all that compared to making sure Trump can rule the United American Empire like the king that (you believe) he should be?
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Musk and DOGE are acting WITHIN the mandate of the sitting U.S. president, not against him. Last week, they dug up an old video of Obama from 2011, promising to audit the government in order to root out fraud, waste, and abuse. 2011 Obama would be an outcast from today’s liberal party.
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Koby, you know shit about fuck about auditing. Absolutely none of what Musk is doing would be considered auditing by professionals.
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Name one person who has been charged with fraud based on Elon’s work.
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Elon and his team should be charged with fraud for making up numbers and breaking shit under the guise of an “audit.”
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Within the mandate and outside the law and the Constitution. It’s a fascist, authoritarian and corrupt government.
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The Obama administration, of course, did investigate waste, fraud, and abuse both
Before: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/bae-systems-plc-pleads-guilty-and-ordered-pay-400-million-criminal-fine
and
After: https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/sandiego/press-releases/2014/seven-plead-guilty-in-widening-bribery-and-kickback-case the video in question
The Biden administration racked up billions in settlements and judgments going after fraud and abuse as well: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/false-claims-act-settlements-and-judgments-exceed-2-billion-fiscal-year-2022
Contrast that with babby’s first shadowkleptocracy and one is impressed with your capacity for cognitive dissonance.
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So what? That doesn’t mean they’re working within the law. Despite his claims and your apparent belief to the contrary, Donald Trump’s word is not the law, and he is not the final arbiter of that law. But hey, keep going with that train of thought. I’m sure it won’t lead anywhere that leads to you defending segregation, eugenics, and genocide like Trump and Musk would.
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It sounds like we have very different ideas about the definition of the Deep State. I refer to it as career bureaucrats embedded into the government with their own agenda, separate from that of the American people and their elected officials. You seem to refer to the Deep State as any adherents of Article 2 first sentence, a definition noone used prior to January.
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Given that no such bureaucrats seem able to stop Donald Trump and Elon Musk from gutting tens of thousands of government jobs; cancelling medical research; culling thousands of references to women, people of color, and queer people in historical archives and government documents; and preparing to dismantle entire departments of the federal government with or without the approval of Congress? I don’t see how a “deep state” can exist in the way you frame it.
And that besides: How do you know that any such “deep state” works for liberals instead of conservatives? Is it because you know that conservatives want to dismantle the government and replace it with a single all-powerful unitary executive whose word is law and whose law is absolute, as befitting a man (and only ever a man) who would serve as the human version of the deity of their preferred religious mythology?
I don’t regard the “deep state” as even existing. But if you’re going to go out on a limb and talk about people being a whole-ass shadow government unto themselves, consider this: Elon Musk is “moving fast and breaking things” with only the approval, but not necessarily the oversight, of Donald Trump. Musk has been given the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, and he can wreck anything he wants so long as he doesn’t royally fuck over Trump and his personal sense of all-mightiness.
The “deep state” is a myth, no more real than the tales of the Greek gods or the fables of Jesus Christ. Your belief in the “deep state” is as overtly religious as the belief in those other myths. Believing Trump and Musk are “eradicating” it is another leap of faith that paints them as demigods. You worship at the altar of the MAGA ideology, and you will eventually discover that your gods have not only abandoned you, but actively made things worse for most everyone who believed in them.
But please, do keep reading from the Book of DJT. I can’t wait until you get to the part about justifying the eradication of trans people and watch you do backflips to explain how it isn’t doing that at all.
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It’s a good thing that they can’t. The bureaucrats are unelected. Their jobs were created by executive prerogative, and can be eliminated by executive prerogative.
They previously worked for noone, given that they even worked to thwart 2011 Obama. But since 2016, liberals have fully embraced the swamp.
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So are the people on the Supreme Court, but I don’t see you calling for their heads.
…yet.
First off: Literally every grammar/spell checker, every English expert, and anyone else with two brain cells to rub together can and will tell you that it’s “no one”—two words, every time, all the time. Stop intentionally trying to make yourself look like an illiterate idiot.
Second: What the actual goddamn fuck are you talking about now, you fascist-supporting dipshit?
Re: Re: Re:5 They teach US government poorly in russia, I guess
Agencies are created by Congress, you subliterate numbskull
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Given that he keeps making the “noone” mistake, they don’t seem to teach English well there, either. 😏
Re: Re: Re:7 If your the grammar police, let me see your badge
Irregardless of they’re grammar mistakes, the lack of understanding of the role of Congress here really grinds my gears
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Yeah, Elon is just a career bureaucrat embedded into the government with his own agenda, separate from that of the American people and their elected officials! Wait…
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“ I refer to it as career bureaucrats embedded into the government with their own agenda, separate from that of the American people and their elected officials.”
Or as we call them, employees of the United States Government.
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Asserts facts not in evidence, namely evidence of fraud, waste, or mismanagement. They’ve declared a lot of fraud and waste, but only evidenced the existence of programs not favored by the administration and declared them fraud.
Congress has the power of the purse. The constitutional power of the president to impound funds is pretty limited. The fraud we know exists is areas doge isn’t looking at. A lot of our military spending is waste and graft. We don’t have funds for what they need, and waste money on parts we already have, or redundant equipment made in an important district. The kinds of waste we know exists there dwarf the savings from personell cuts. But that graft and waste line the pockets of the real people who matter. You know, the guys who will consume the savings promised by musk, and then some, with the tax breaks planned by the GOP draft budget projected to strap a rocket to the deficit and take it to the moon.
Dealing with waste and fraud my ass. He’s lighting the economic house on fire to hide the stacks of cash he’s pocketing. And then he’s going to come to the people and beg for money to rebuild so he can skim off the top of that as well.
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The mandate they should be following is that of the constitution.
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I don’t understand this claim (that Democrats are pro-fraud). No honest person in any country would support fraud, corruption, or waste. The problem here is that only the person with the waste-destroying hammer gets to claim what is and isn’t fraud and waste.
The wielder of this hammer is using it to remove congressionally-appointed agencies and organizations. The executive branch does not get to override previous congressional laws, Congress does.
The wielder of this hammer is using it to force dramatic cuts to government jobs that provide services to the public.
The wielder of this hammer is operating without any oversight, self-reported “savings” that are often lies, and not using government-level care to ensure that our public information is kept secure and not exposed to foreign adversaries.
Disagreeing about the use of foreign aid does not mean the money is “fraud” or “corruption”. Disagreeing about the use of DEI does not mean that anyone making appeals to cultural openness is malevolent or anti-white racism.
The funny thing about government jobs is that the money spent on them goes to Americans, not to foreign countries. Not only does the money go to an American (and this money is circulated in the economy), but the job performs some service that benefits the American public. Often, the money spent on these services SAVE the government more money elsewhere than was spent on the service.
Even if we paid someone to literally sit around and do nothing (which I have yet to see happening, no matter how much our “golf” president claims is done by remote workers), this money isn’t really “wasted”, as it will be used in the American economy, which benefits everyone.
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Is it just me or is Kdawg giving off a real Baghdad Bob vibe these days?
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Don’t forget to work the balls while you’re gagging on the shaft.
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“The deep state” is just the conservative name for a functional government.
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Koby, you’re so high man, beware of not bumping a Starlink satellite, Elon would be very angry at you.
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So, question for Kolby:
How do you rationalize being ok with a foreign oligarch illegal immigrant setting up an unsecured private party used to access “for your eyes only” top secret information;
You; having spent a decade ranting about Hillary Clinton and ‘her emails’ and Hunter Biden and ‘the laptop’ which were nothing, are nothing, and will continue to be nothing.
People who don’t have security clearance will be able to locate top secret information!
but the blovating about national security and rule of law was there.
What happened there, man? I’m getting a bit of cognitive dissonance just thinking about it. I bet you get monster headaches!
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You really think that putting a possibly unencrypted satellite dish on top of a building that you know for sure has signals intelligence offices from every non allied nation watching over like a hawk is a good idea?
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Musk and his Twitler Youth are the threat from within. They are the deep state.
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I’m sure the three letter agencies will get it after all the enemy governments do.
Starlink is NOT a secure system.
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Your “deep state” is alledgedly capable of sabotaging the work of the entities that govern it, but — despite a headcount of many thousands and a budget of many billions — that deep state is incapable of breaching the communications network of a company that is within the jurisdiction of said deep state. Go figure.
Like all fascist bogeymen, your enemy is enormously powerful and at the same time practically powerless.
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“ This is fine if you trust the deep state, but most Americans do not.”
First rule of dealing drugs is never get high on your own supply.
Network Encryption
Note that while network encryption (encrypting the StarLink connection itself, as with a VPN) does provide some additional security, for many purposes application security (that is, HTTPS) is sufficient.
It’s still a major security breach, and would be a fireable offense at any major company.
That said, my guess is that potentially what they’re trying to do is dodge what would be a standard security practice – a man-in-the-middle HTTPS interceptor, used to log egress traffic (among other things). Or maybe dodge around some specific firewall policy. This isn’t necessarily a deliberate attempt to hide something or open things up for an attack as it might be them just trying to “speed things up” to do work.
Still a major security breach and a fireable offense….
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Trump fires people like it’s a bodily function. There are no “fireable” and “non-fireable” offenses; some ostensible causes can’t even be perceived as “offenses” by anyone else.
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This isn’t a question of apps and encryption. This is a question of attack surface.
Starlink at the white house
It makes it easier for elon to monitor secret white house communications. Obviously. No other excuse.
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Well, now that Trump is a Musk sock puppet, Musk needs to keep tabs.
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Lol, you really believe that?
it's an op
this is an exfiltration technique. you know, like when ransomware gets into your system and starts to offload data to a remote system to hold it hostage.
there’s obviously a preference for unmonitored links for that exfiltration process. that is what this is.
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Trump wants more documents for his bathrooms. Musk said, “Yeah, I got ya.”
Looking forward to a new series of “but her emails” NY Times articles