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Fourth US Navy Collision This Year Raises Suspicion of Cyber-Attacks (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Early Monday morning a U.S. Navy Destroyer collided with a merchant vessel off the coast of Singapore. The U.S. Navy initially reported that 10 sailors were missing, and today found "some of the remains" in flooded compartments. While Americans mourn the loss of our brave warriors, top brass is looking for answers. Monday's crash involving the USS John McCain is the fourth in the area, and possibly the most difficult to understand. So far this year 17 U.S. sailors have died in the Pacific southeast due to seemingly accidental collisions with civilian vessels.
Should four collisions in the same geographical area be chalked up to coincidence? Could a military vessel be hacked? In essence, what if GPS spoofing or administrative lockout caused personnel to be unaware of any imminent danger or unable to respond? The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) says there's no reason to think it was a cyber-attack, but they're looking into it: "2 clarify Re: possibility of cyber intrusion or sabotage, no indications right now...but review will consider all possibilities," tweeted Adm. John Richardson. The obvious suspects -- if a sovereign nation is behind any alleged attacks -- would be Russia, China, and North Korea, all of whom have reasonable access to the location of all four incidents. It may be chilling to imagine such a bold risk, but it's not outlandish to think a government might be testing cyber-attack capabilities in the field.
Should four collisions in the same geographical area be chalked up to coincidence? Could a military vessel be hacked? In essence, what if GPS spoofing or administrative lockout caused personnel to be unaware of any imminent danger or unable to respond? The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) says there's no reason to think it was a cyber-attack, but they're looking into it: "2 clarify Re: possibility of cyber intrusion or sabotage, no indications right now...but review will consider all possibilities," tweeted Adm. John Richardson. The obvious suspects -- if a sovereign nation is behind any alleged attacks -- would be Russia, China, and North Korea, all of whom have reasonable access to the location of all four incidents. It may be chilling to imagine such a bold risk, but it's not outlandish to think a government might be testing cyber-attack capabilities in the field.
Conspiracy theories activate!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Isn't there someone on the deck looking for other ships in the vicinity?
Just saying??
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Have the considered it's not a state actor but a rich media mogul who's causing the accidents to extend his media empire? If only there were dashing British secret agent to stop this dastardly villain's evil plans.
This is nothing more than speculation based on fear. Fear is always about what's in peoples sub-conscious that they feel they can't control, and varies with whatever people feel anxious about at the time.
60 years ago the headline would have been "Are the collisions based on Soviet Saboteurs? How many communists are in the Navy?" These days it's computers. Same old story.
Cuts in military spending (and hence training) between 2008 and 2016 are the problem.
obviously. Because cyber.
CAPTCHA: conquers
Any military power using anything from Microsoft.
#DeleteFacebook
McCain is a racist scumbag that hates normal people and wants us to die. He only loves rich white people, but he doesn't hate enough for Trump's kind so Trump hates McCain and wants him to die. This is Trump's fault.
Except (at least for the last 2 boats I saw) they were hit midship. If they had been hacked I'd have expected the GPS hacking to steer the ships INTO other ships - not vice versa - which would require a higher level of control.
Windows for Warships, baby.
Where problems begin.
On a big ship no one is relying on GPS alone.
Every ship has a magnetic compass.
A helmsman should realize if the compass heading ans speed versus the GPS position makes any sense.
Then again: during daytime a big civilian (freight!) vessel is like a mountain. It is extremely hard to overlook it.
During night time, the whole deck of big ocean going vessles is illuminated by flood lights.
Unless in fog, IT IS COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSEE IT
And then we have radar .... so if the ship got "hacked" the only option are hacked bandanas on the eyes of the watch and a hacked radar system.
The latter would be a story, though.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Any nation-state with the ability to hack software that would influence the most powerful warships in the world would not be doing so for farts and giggles over the course of months to cause a few (in the scheme of things) relatively minor collisions during peace time. They would reserve this cyber weapon for use when it really counted. If this was the result of a lone wolf hacker they would have sold this weapon for a huge amount of money to any of the countries that would want them to use against the US when needed, not risking its discovery messing around with it just for fun.
Better known as 318230.
Once is Happenstance,
Twice is Coincidence,
Three Times is Enemy Action!
..the main cause is incompetency or negligence, or both..
Cyber attacks are suspected
Requiem for the American Dream
does anyone else remember the "flagship US airforce carrier" that, back in the mid 1990s, had to be TOWED into harbour... because it was running Window NT 4.0 systems... which had just crashed across the *entire* ship? and does anyone else remember soldiers running Sony BMG Root-kitted CDs which then illegally sent out a listing of CLASSIFIED FILENAMES OFF TO SONY'S SERVERS?? do we not remember these things??
there is a *really good reason* why the NSA refuses to permit windows systems on its premises. why cannot the U.S. Military get it through its thick fucking head that running an OS that's been cost-shaved by a company that REFUSES TO LET ITS SECURITY TEAM MAKE CRITICAL CHANGES because the Security Director is told, every single fucking time "your proposed security improvement will cost us money. get lost and come back when you have a quotes security quotes fix that actually makes us some money".
we KNOW it's insecure. we KNOW it can be root-kitted (thank you NSA). we KNOW that there is ransomware and christ knows what else. so i don't understand why people do not understand that to run the Windows Operating System is tantamount to self-harm, and any Military that runs the Windows OS is basically, sad to say it, ASKING - no is DESPERATE - to be screwed over by anyone and everyone.
This is like the opening act that sets the scene in a disaster movie.
Also, NEVER let a Senator drive the submarine!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This sounds like the basic plot from a half-dozen or so of the James Bond movies.
#DeleteChrome
Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I'd have produced that key if they hadn't of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers...
It's pretty tough to "hack" the sonar shack and operator. I suppose you might foul up communication between sonar and the bridge, but the Navy has a backup for that, too, including runners if necessary. And BTW, do they still have voice-powered phones on board?
Once is a tragedy.
Twice is a coincidence.
Thrice is an attack.
Four times is some form of attack combined with incompetent response.
It is clear that there is some form of electronic warfare (not necessarily hacking) at play here. This goes beyond just GPS spoofing, since these ships are loaded with surface radar that should spot a massive container or tanker ship from the horizon, even if one or both ships is off course. I highly doubt that N. Korea's saber rattling which caused more US naval assets to enter the region was a coincidence. Given the location of all the ships involved prior to and during the accidents, I highly suspect that either China or N. Korea have been field testing a new clandestine weapon. Once we figure out what it is and who has been doing it, we should make sure to obliterate the source and sink 4 of their naval ships for starters. If they want to continue to attack the US navy, we can continue to to destroy their assets, since this is an act of war according to international law.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
"...brave warriors..., seriously?
Is the US at war, last time I checked, it wasn't.
So the poor slobs below deck were just doing their jobs, as in jobs, not warrioring, or whatever it is you're trying to convey.
The Mil PsyOps is getting bad here on /..
Early Monday, Indeed.
The fishing vessel with no working GPS or radio, hit the navy ship mid port side. Oo
Everybody seems to assume that it's the Navy vessels that were the subject of the attacks, when it's far more likely that it's the merchant vessels to have been attacked (with the object of the attacks being to disable the Navy ships).
It's hard to do anything to a Navy ship -- their GPS uses encrypted signals, they have radars out the wazoo, and their control systems are protected against attack.
A regular merchant vessel, however, is probably quite ripe for attack from a state-sponsored actor. Some maintenance guy at a shipyard can easily be bribed to put a USB stick into a control system to plant some malware.
dom
There's absolutely no evidence there was a cyber-attack.
All we've had is a bunch of people speculating "cyber-attack" because it's a popular topic right now.
The Navy isn't denying because they haven't finished investigating the accident and don't want to start publicly ruling things out. Maybe it will turn out to be a cyber-attack, but the currently available information is completely consistent with a dozen other scenarios that have nothing to do with a cyber attack.
I stole this Sig
A foreign state actor hacked into a US Naval Destroyer and with precision knocked out the steering to the ship at a critical moment where by it couldn't maneuver and was rammed by merchant vessel. And then moments later restored the steering to a working condition. Is that it? Do I have it right?
As opposed to some mechanical/electrical malfunction happening at a critical moment causing said accident and the systems being manually reset after the fact.
Yeah, right. Anyone who has ever worked with complex mechanical/electrical equipment knows that shit happens and that you don't need external actors to screw things up for you. And that goes without saying that the tropics are not an area that is conducive to nice, neat operations of equipment (consider the British destroyers that can't operate in the warm waters of the Middle East)
So may I present exhibit "A". It's this sharp piece of metal in the form of a razor. Once owned by a chap named Occam.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
If you believed that, you'd believe 39 of the 50 US states elections in specific counties were hacked ...
Oh.
Wait.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So THATS what it looks like when Windows crashes on a warship..... it actually crashes the warship.
.... "Titanic" , it turns warships into icebergs for civilian ships to crash into.
I take naming rights for the malware
They should be using QNX.
Russian hackers leave porn pages in browser history of married man
Coburg, Germany - Does Putin have no conscience at all? Russian hackers apparently compromised the computer of a married man from Coburg, Germany, and left numerous links to porn sites in his browser history. It is unclear what caused the man to attract the attention of the Kremlin.
Source (in German)
Someone has been watching too many James Bond movies...............
This is pretty much the plot of the 1997 James Bond film: Tomorrow Never Dies
Although, I wouldn't put it bast the Sinclair Media Group to try to start a war for ratings...............
Should four collisions in the same geographical area be chalked up to coincidence? Could a military vessel be hacked?
Coincidence? No.
Could the boats have been hacked? yes - but it's incredibly unlikely.
What other possibilities are there? The 99% reason is stupidity. Either some idiot doesn't know how to drive a boat ( x4) or the standard naval tactics to "dominate" any given situation have been taken to extremes - beyond the capabilities of the people and equipment in use.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The admiral's response was essentially "not a chance, but I don't want to waste my time explaining it to you"
US Navy ships are not auto-guided by GPS or radar. Computers are not in the loop on the actuation of the rudders. The crew is supposed to use things like radar and GPS like they can use a sextant or bathymetry - as a supplement to th good ol' Mk I Eyeball.
The crew seriously screwed up. Period. Another capain who got his command under Obama and his idiot SecNav Mr Mabus has just forfeited his carreer through sheer incompetence. I'm sure he and his crew know all they need to know about "tolerance", transgenderism, the use of over-priced biofuels, and being "a global force for good" - but they appear to be completely incompetent in navigation, seamanship, situational awareness, and the most basic naval operations.
In each of these recent incidents, the crews only needed to do what American sailors have been doing for about two nd a half centuries: LOOK around with their eyeballs, and steer their vessel and adjust its speed accordingly. No computers are even involved in these basics.
signed,
a saddened Navy vet
who were supposed to be observing on all sides of the vessel for just such occurances.
If they aren't paying enough attention to avoid a collision with a fishing boat, then they sure aren't paying enough attention for either military or terrorist attacks intended to take down the vessel.
Based on these collisions I would have to that that whole fleet needs to go through new readiness training drills.
It's a shame that you only remember the rumors and myths instead of finding out the facts. The aircraft carrier you're referring to is the USS Yorktown, which did suffer computer-related problems around 1997. But if the problem was just that the OS crashed, they could have just rebooted the damn thing!
The actual problem was a crew member entered a 0 into a field in a network database, causing all of the software using the database to fail after attempting to divide by 0. The ship was dead in the water for under three hours and returned to port under its own power.
In other words, this was a problem with the software running the ship, not the OS! Considering that most bugs are in the software running on the OS and not the OS itself, this should not be a surprise.
dom
There is a culture of overwork that results in severe sleep deprivation in the US Navy, and many people standing watch are impaired at an equivalent level to beign legally drunk. It's been the confirmed cause of other incidents before, and it seems a far more likely explanation than cyber attacks. Unfortunately, the Navy does not appear to be doing much to solve the problem.
The first link in the Slashdot description is to a story about an incident from May (the wrong collision).
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
And not undertraining and snafus in the navy! Definitely!
How could any of us forget that article about the 'US Battleship' disabled by Windows NT? It was linked here on Slashdot an average of forty times per article.
All a hacker would have to do is hijack the ship's wifi, and provide unlimited bandwidth to unblocked porn sites.
It's the only explanation for nobody noticing those huge cargo ships...
The Air Force doesn't have carriers, dumbass.
A fairy tale starts with. "Once upon a time."
A sea story starts with, "Hey, this ain't no shit."
So hey ... this ain't no shit from a 9-year naval vet:
Naval ships have collision warning systems.
There's a "ding, ding, ding" to alert crew.
That's when eyeballs gather around radar, and secret guy stuff.
Also, the watch scans the horizon with binoculars.
If collision systems are "frozen" or spoofed, it could be a "drunk walk" algorithm that increases the probability of a collision.
My shipmates were never comfortable with the first report.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
No, they should be using GHS INTEGRITY or similar for every mission critical computer. But inevitably, someone with a lot of say wants the feature richness that comes with Windows, Linux, etc, and makes an exception somewhere, e.g. to allow the UI to run on a less stable OS than the back end / control systems.
They learn this at the elite Naval school: Frigate Aquatic Governing School
If a "cyber" attack, even one that did damage it was not intended to do, cripples a US Navy vessel's computer, and as a result it crashes, (one,) and sailors are injured or killed, (two,) which both seem to have been the case here... is that meaningfully different from an attack that exploits a hole in a ship's defenses?
For example, suppose someone opposed to us realized that the radar of some naval vessel does not transmit when it's pointed directly aft, over the transom, meaning it can't see, (in radar, at least,) right directly behind it, so anything that can hug the waterline, (and how damned funny would it be if this were a real vulnerability?!?) but not be actually under it, essentially a flying carpet of sorts, being pulled by a flotilla of tiny, fish-shaped, wriggling-for-propulsion underwater drones, could sneak up behind a vessel, conforming to the shape of the surface of the water, invisible to radar, and laden with high explosives and maybe shrapnel, could come up behind a boat, glide under, affix itself to the hull and detonate, sinking the ship.
If someone discovered that could work, tried it out on a US Navy vessel, and in so doing injured or killed a bunch of our sailors, (to say nothing of the other, more subtle harm, that the loss of that vessel, even if only temporarily, would represent, plus the cost of fixing it in purely economic terms...) wouldn't that... um... constitute an act of war?
How is tricking our sailors into hurting themselves (by screwing with their ship's guidance,) morally or ethically, or legally different from just actively planting or throwing or shooting a bomb, actually, and blowing the ship up?
If we HAD a real goddamned president, instead of a sad, angry, stupid, sub-moronic, Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child, narcissistic incompetent, sexual predator and child molester, illegally occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., when he can be BOTHERED to be there, when he can be pulled away from his fucking GOLF GAME, we'd be finding the people responsible, and kicking the living dog-shit out of them.
But instead, we're gonna do nothing, because it was the Russians, and they control our government now by having installed someone whose IQ is LITERALLY about the same as his shoe-size, (I don't mean that as a throw-away insult, I mean his intelligence quotient, that is, his mental age (MA) divided by his physical age (PA,) given that he's about 70 and he's got the mentality of about maybe an eight-year-old, and 8 / 70 = 11.4, or about, which if he has decent-sized feet for his height, it's not hard to imagine he'd wear an 11 1/2, which is actually slightly LARGER than his IQ).
Hence, on top of everything else he is, he is literally (and yes, I know what that word means,) more mentally retarded or impaired, if you prefer, than the TEXTBOOK DEFINITION of an IMBECILE.
It's such a fucking DISGRACE that that shitsack was and is suffered, by our useless spineless dickless heartless worthless brainless congress, to pretend to be a president of this once-great, but now basically dead, zombie nation.
This country has SEPSIS, is dying, and the illegal, fraudulent installation of Russian puppet, Putin's Dick-Ornament, clown in chief, was the knife in the gut that let all the raw sewage in America's bowels have direct access to its blood stream is RESPONSIBLE.
In other words, we're fucked, and I'd sure hate to be in the Navy right now, since they're all, every one of them, worldwide, high-value targets who have no hope of defending themselves, using easily compromised, off-the-shelf-shit for mission-critical applications, and are about to get fucked, quite possibly out of existence.
For any who marvel at this post, I'd like to point out that whatever fuckery was done to that destroyer's guidance system, could probably ALSO be done to a nuclear ballistic missile submarine. An armed one.
Sleep tight tonight. And good luck, people.
The buck stops at one of the 16 White House staff members who have been fired. But it definitely doesn't stop at the top. Trump's Navy has the most spectacular crashes. Big, beautiful crashes that we can all be proud of.
If you can't stand the heat, stay off the golf course.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But it was a relatively new ship, was probably running Windows 8. Kind of gives new meaning to a Windows crash.
No, the Navy doesn't "suspect" cyber attacks. They don't "suspect" anything at this stage of the investigation. This article is nothing but irresponsible clickbait.
This is probably fueled by the many rightwing nutjob sites that have already pronounced the accident to be an attack. The same nutjob websites that whupped up fears of a US Army takeover during Jade Helm and pronounced that the USS Enterprise was rigged with bombs so Obama could sink it on it's last deployment and start a war.
Lack of sleep. Sailors are allowed inadequate time to rest.
The simplest explanation is probably the correct one. Thanks Obama!
I was a Shrimp Boat Captain (I've already heard your 10,000 Gump jokes, thank you)
By Admiralty law, the Captain is responsible for not hitting another vessel, *period*.
Any fool who depends on any electronic device instead of his own eyes and ears for navigational safety does not deserve to be Captain or even crew on a vessel.
Radar and GPS are very nice toys, but the minute you trust or depend on them, you are totally FUCKING incompetent.
This is how the "illuminati" operate. They don't care whose navy those ships belong to or what naive notions you have about how the world works. For what we know it might have been a direct message to the traitorous senator himself not to buckle while fighting against the truth.
Still too complicated. Try:
What's the bet that they were all looking at fucking computer screens, pads and phones and not looking out the window?
See subject for further details.
Having work military "certification" testing, the test are usually the most ideal conditions such that systems always passes. The test are usually set up just so it sorta works, the contractor gets paid and the military can say look at my new toy.
My bet is on the navigation system/ radar system has a bug in which big ship under the right conditions just disappears from radar or the navigation system incorrectly plots the other ships vector.
of course it crashed. i'm surprised it hasn't done so several times already.
(yes i know, John S McCain...)
Some in the chain of command have been staring into the sun.
Table-ized A.I.
All these accidents are not happening to the far more numerous: mine ships, cutters, amphibious assault ships, carriers, support ships, patrols ships, LCS etc they have all happened to our high end air defense ships and only those with ballistic missile defense capability and even then only ships in sailing in Asia around the South China Sea and Korean peninsula! The Mathematical possibility of this being a random series of events is way to low to brush it off. Also when the MacCain tragedy was first reported CNN stated "The destroyer had lost ability to steer the ship just prior to the accident." Now that statement looks to have been removed and has not been repeated this (And many other factors.) makes me suspicious
We saw how well that technique worked in Titanic.
Table-ized A.I.
Any hack that's capable of causing a destroyer to collide with another ship is also capable of revealing its location. Knowing the location of US navy ships is far more valuable than causing a couple of collisions. Any country that has this ability would never waste it on something so miniscule.
Any military power using anything from Microsoft.
You laugh, but this has already happened with catastrophic results as expected: https://gcn.com/Articles/1998/...
Remember the US carrier fleet commander who got into an argument about who should change course with a lighthouse?
I figure it's much more likely that the captain demanded the traffic (driven by or for nignogs, clearly, it's the middle east) change course and played chicken with a tanker that has no chance of complying due to their massive size.
BINGO!!!
They conducted operations in the south china sea and were preparing to pull into singapore.
Those who have been in the navy.. especially those who have been in deck, know it's extremely likely that that bridge crew went straight from conducting missions and drills simultaneously... then was made to prepare the ship cosmetically for a port visit.. and then was required to prepare the mooring stations for getting into port... and was then required to go to the bridge and stand watch.
This means days without sleep... not to do anything important... but to sweep, paint, and pretend to fight fires so the CO can look good on his fitrep.
I don't know how many more people need to die for these faggots but I can promise you they'll be the last ones to care about anyone but themselves.
can we strike North Korea back or will be seen as an 1st strike and chain be forced to help nk?
and java...
Employ an inertial navigation system on board that backs up the GPS. Alarm when difference is great enough. Then fly an aircraft at high altitude and see if it's GPS agrees with the surface ships. Spoofing an aircraft at altitude where its GPS antennas are directional to the 180 degree horizontal plane and upwards is tough. Laser gyro inertial nav is also resilient so ... easy to detect.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
... running an OS that's been cost-shaved by a company that REFUSES TO LET ITS SECURITY TEAM MAKE CRITICAL CHANGES because the Security Director is told, every single fucking time "your proposed security improvement will cost us money. get lost and come back when you have a quotes security quotes fix that actually makes us some money".
...
Not off-topic here...
That is what I think of every time I boot into Windows 8.1, which insists on telling me that I am exposing myself to danger (my fault) if I turn off the Microsoft-written and integrated "Windows Virus Defender" (or whatever it's called) from scanning and updating whenever it feels like doing so.
I mean, really... Come on... The "antivirus protection" comes WITH the OS that I installed, and was written by the same company! It's basically a tacit admission that "we write bug-riddled code, which must be monitored, so included in the OS itself is a 'threat-monitor'."
Who the fuck made the decision to make that argument to the purchaser, and who the fuck wrote that system dialog? It defies all logic.
You're thinking of a different incident.
It was a battleship, not a carrier.
And yes, it did indeed require towage back to port.
My guess is that while the combat systems on these ships are awesome and they're probably also capable of awesome electronic navigation, but some kind of "not the Navy Way" mindset causes them to do things the old fashioned way and not rely on modern navigation systems when they're not feeling vulnerable.
The combat radars are turned off and the information sections are probably lightly staffed at 3 AM in friendly waters. The rest of the crew is doing business as usual and navigating the old fashioned way *and* being really lazy about it, assuming that everyone else is doing their job so they can slack off. It's 3 AM, and we're just cruising.
You could literally spend $5000 on recreational marine displays, radar and AIS and totally avoid this accident. AIS in particular -- ships *broadcast* their position, heading and speed and it shows up on screen, allowing even recreational boaters to set collision prediction alarms. Even recreational radar can track targets and show predicted paths against the vessel's own path. Why isn't this being done on the bridge of Navy ships?
But it's been explained to me that the Navy doesn't like to do this way, they have the staff and bridge space to do manual plotting and there's some kind of belief that it's superior.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
These are warships, supposedly capable of detecting supersonic enemy planes on attack vectors as well as missiles, hundred of miles away and they are unable to detect a fucking container-ship as big as a skyscraper 50 yards away?
does anyone else remember the "flagship US airforce carrier"
Wow, the Air Force has carriers now? I'll bet the Navy is really pissed about that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Here is a related article from one of the other collisions: http://www.reuters.com/article...
q[... the ship's commanding officer, executive officer and master chief, would be removed from the vessel because "we've lost trust and confidence in their ability to lead."]
Also know as the last time the US Navy used Windows to run anything important on a ship. Everything is Linux based now.
This is Singapore and there's a lot of "activities" that sailors can partake in. They totally want some of those famous chili crabs and barley drinks. Maybe a walk along Orchard Road before taking in the bountiful and beautiful views from Orchard Tower.
WannaCry now?
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
There is no single hack that should work to cause an accident like this. It doesn't matter if GPS is hacked or even off. It doesn't matter if your navigation system is faulty or given the wrong information. It doesn't matter if your radars are down. The fact of the matter is, ships have been navigating in congested waters at night for hundreds of years and there is no hack that should serve to cause a collision.
Bridge watchkeepers are supposed to be trained in heads up visual navigation. GPS, ECPINS, AIS, navigation radars - they are all useful tools, but a watchkeeper is supposed to be trained to know when those tools are lying to to them. Because it really isn't a matter of if, but when something will happen to cause one or more of those tools to lie to you. This is especially true of warship watchkeepers who are supposed to be trained to operate in places where there may be denial of service for GPS or where AIS is being spoofed.
I wrote about something like this before - almost two years ago. American warships have a reputation in NATO as being driven by amateurs. During fleet manoeuvers, the rest of us actively plot wider safety bubbles around American ships because they are erratic and have a tendency to simply go the wrong direction and just not care.
This isn't a cyber attack. There is no attack on anything on the American ship that should have defeated the watchkeeper's mark 1 eyeball, and hacking a container ship to hit a warship with is like hacking a semi truck and thinking you are going to use it to ram a dirt bike on an open field. It's simply not possible to hit a warship with a container vessel if the warship has a watchkeeper that is awake.
Clearly there is no incompetence in the military, and they are capable of performing the most basic of naval vessel duties "steering a boat", so the most obvious answer is that it is an external "bad actor" - I wonder how many road crashes can be explained away so easily?
Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence.
The third time itâ(TM)s enemy action.
- Goldfinger
The simplest and most obvious cause.
You need to embrace the cancer that will end your life.
Wouldn't be funny if everyone is looking at the hypersonic anti-ship missiles as the next big threat, while somebody has clearly figured out you can take out major USN ships with nothing more than cheap commercial vessel? You don't even need a warhead. In both of these recent collisions, ONE HIT from non-explosive attack wiped out comms, killed crew, almost killed the captain, and did a LOT of critical damage to what was supposed to be an armored military ship.
This should not be happening in the first place. But it ALSO should not be so spectacularly successful. Are we making ships out of tin cans? How is being hit causing this much damage, and what does it say about what a real anti-ship missile would do?
Nothing good is what it says.
Sig for hire.
Would give different meaning to BSOD, the Blue Sea of Death.
I'll bet the Navy is really pissed about that.
We'll show them! We'll get some airplanes!
Have gnu, will travel.
a crew member entered a 0 into a field in a network database
The first time the Navy has had a ship disabled by a zero since WWII.
Have gnu, will travel.
Can it be that Russia "could be" a threat? /LOL, gotta love the alt-right wingers saying that Russia is better than Democrats.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
I should have been more direct because TFA says all you need to read.
Should four collisions in the same geographical area be chalked up to coincidence? Could a military vessel be hacked? In essence, what if GPS spoofing or administrative lockout caused personnel to be unaware of any imminent danger or unable to respond? The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) says there's no reason to think it was a cyber-attack, but they're looking into it: "2 clarify Re: possibility of cyber intrusion or sabotage, no indications right now...but review will consider all possibilities," tweeted Adm. John Richardson.
I happen to love good Conspiracy theory. Like the Magic Bullet for JFK, lots of good questions about 9/11. The difference between the good theories and this is that the good ones have facts you need to really think about and chase down.
I find it much more likely that the ship lost power and made a classified distress call, but backup could not get there in time and they didn't want to notify the cargo ship to change course (or made that call way too late).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
All of these ships have radar. If GPS were down and even if they didn't know where they are, they'd still notice big hunks of metal approaching them.
I think y'all are talking about the cruiser Yorktown hat was disabled by a software problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It could not have been the aircraft carrier Yorktown because the first Yorktown carrier was sunk at Midway in 1942, and the next WWII Yorktown carrier has been a museum ship in Charleston SC since the 1970's.
And it was not any of the battleships due to their being decommissioned and mothballed around 1991, and after that any travel was pretty much by tugboat.
If anyone has a link to an article saying otherwise, I'd like to see it.
Or they were actually stoned and / or drunk.
The problem with INTEGRITY is that there's almost no one left who still knows how to work with it. It's only used in the military anyway, and even there it's been dying out. You can't use people skilled in Linux to work with it, because companies only want to hire people who already are experts at something, so the talent pool is now nearly elderly and retiring. All the young engineers are familiar with Linux so that's what ends up getting used even if it isn't the greatest choice.
Put the smartphone away and pay attention to what you are doing.
Typical of the zrazy rubbish that appears in the US media.
The real cause is just plain old incompetence - something the US navy is widely known for. If someone had been posted on watch, as they should have been on a navy ship, there is no way this would have happened. If a merchant ship can get close enough to crash into US navy ships without detection, what hope would they have against the most advanced naval powers?
Cyber attacks? NO. The issue here is that the United States Navy is run by MORONS in the most literal sense of the word.
This is a top down issue.
How could any of us forget that article about the 'US Battleship' disabled by Windows NT? It was linked here on Slashdot an average of forty times per article.
It wasn't a battleship.
This is getting old.
Not even a minor consideration. Thanks for guessing.
On top of all that, the US Navy does all kinds of dumb stuff no one else does. First, they use English units for stuff, so when they're communicating with other ships, they'll give them distances in yards instead of meters.
BFD. When ships are trying to navigate past each other, the difference between yards and meters doesn't matter.
They also give bearings in a completely different way: absolute instead of relative like everyone else.
Nobody gives a shit about that. When you're talking to another ship it's "Hey, I'm the destroyer 3,000 meters/yards off your port bow. What are your intentions?"
Also, merchant ships have something called AIS so they can see where other ships are. The Navy routinely turns theirs off so people can't see where their ships are on ship-tracking websites.
Ship tracking websites are utterly fucking useless when you're navigating in congested areas like the Straits of Malacca/Gibraltar.
Merchant ships have a small crew and short chain of command, and captains can just call each other on the radio and discuss their intentions, but the Navy has a long chain of command between the captain and the helmsman
Except on the actual bridge, where if things are tight the captain is right there, and might even take the conn, making the chain of command captain->helmsman. Worst case, it's captain->OOD->helmsman.
and the captain never talks to other captains on the radio.
WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!!!!
What fucking rectal database did you pull that completely incorrect statement from?!?!?!
How the fuck would you know? Did you read it somewhere on the internet?
I've been there - YOU ARE UTTERLY FUCKING WRONG!!!
Finally, merchant captains mainly just worry about navigation and such, and don't have to deal with stuff like discipline problems for a crew of hundreds. Navy captains don't have that much time actually running a ship, and frequently do it for a short time before being shuffled off to desk duty somewhere.
Basically, the US Navy's entire structure for managing a ship is optimized for war-fighting with young recruits, and not at all for navigating a ship in crowded channels with merchant vessels. And the people who become merchant captains are people who have sea-going and captaining a ship in their blood and dedicate their lives to it. The people who become US Navy captains are there because being a military officer is a stable career and it's a stepping stone to a cushy desk job as an admiral or at least a cushy retirement package after only 20 years in the service.
And all of that is fucking irrelevant when the ship is navigating congested waters.
The problem is more likely inexperienced junior officer(s) on bridge watch who don't properly handle situations. The USS Spruance once ran right into Andros Island because the dumbass OOD was too scared to turn towards a surfaced sub over a fucking mile away. US Navy training is so collision-averse that junior officers are scared to get too close to other ships. So while trying to figure out what to do to avoid that sub, the Spruance ran right into Andros Island. Geez, if you don't want to turn towards that ship, JUST FUCKING STOP. That island won't do anything to you if you sit still.
That training - and all the ways the Navy trained me to handle other ships, which was mostly make a plan way in advance - worked fine out in the middle of the ocean when there were only two ships involved.
But it doesn't work when you need to THINK, and it fell apart even more rapidly in crowded shipping lanes when it takes 5 minutes to make a plan that'll be no good 30 seconds later, and while you're trying to figure out what to do you run into a tanker or Andros Island.
Hell, I remember being OOD at the end of an exercise, we were headed in the wrong
Given how advanced these ships are, one has to ask how they cannot detect a collision? Or better yet, how does a merchant ship collide with a ship without the same kind of warning? I would think after the second mishap someone should have been asking better questions.
That's all fine on a submarine. But this was a destroyer, you know, surface ship with large windows. No amount of navigation system bugs will remove a huge container ship from view of those large windows.
Look, I don't know anything... no claim to expertise... I'm just genuinely baffled as to how you collide with a ship at sea in these circumstances.
Is the visibility poor? If you couldn't see the other ship that is an issue... though, I would think a naval craft would have optics that could see at night and through fog.
As to notions of "well maybe they were hacked"... if that matters at all, then the system is badly designed because a ship like that should be manned at all times when underway. You don't just put it on automatic and then space out.
I can see a ship being taken off course by a hack... maybe being run into a reef or something that wasn't seen below the water line. But a collusion between surface ships at sea? It just seems like incompetence is the only answer. I say this acknowledging that I really don't know what is going on here... just some guy :)
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Let America launch the "War on Incompetency"...
Based on passed wars such as the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, we can expect an increase in incompetency, if that is possible to imagine.
It's not a conventional attack. It's just Indians being Indians and doing the needful. Sometimes they just fuck up your Toys R Us order and sometimes they fuck up your radar/traffic system. Or banking software or medial equipment or...
No, they have the correct incident but are just referring to it as the wrong type of ship. There have been multiple ships named USS Yorktown but the one that was in service in the 1990s was a cruiser. There have been 2 carriers named USS Yorktown, one was sunk in 1942 and the other decommissioned in 1970.
It was originally reported that the ship had to be towed back to port but there is some disagreement as to whether or not that actually happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Have gnu, will travel.
You're thinking of a different incident.
It was a battleship, not a carrier.
No, the USS Yorktown, CG-48, is a Ticonderoga-class cruiser. The US doesn't have any battleships in service, and didn't in 1997 when the incident occurred. The previous USS Yorktown, CV-10, was an Essex-class carrier, which is probably the source of the confusion about CV-48's ship type.
And yes, it did indeed require towage back to port.
So claims Government Computer News. According to Atlantic Fleet, the captain and the contractor who was the source of the GCN story, it did not. The contractor said the reporter altered his statements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48)#Smart_ship_testbed
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
there is a *really good reason* why the NSA refuses to permit windows systems on its premises.
Guess who has a very, very large number of windows installs?
why cannot the U.S. Military get it through its thick fucking head that running an OS
Guess what agency is part of the US Military?
and any Military that runs the Windows OS is basically, sad to say it, ASKING - no is DESPERATE - to be screwed over by anyone and everyone.
Guess how many internal networks a warship has? Hint: It isn't one. Further, guess whether or not the important networks are connected to the Internet.
That fleet's commanding Admiral was relieved of duty yesterday. Typically, this indicates human error, but it does not totally rule out other issues on top of the human error.
Sigh. There is nearly 0% chance this had anything to do with a "cyber attack" and nearly 100% chance that someone wasn't looking out the fucking window for potential conflicting traffic.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I call BS on this, GPS spoofing doesn't prevent the radar from working or from someone looking out the window.
did they find the new bermuda triangle perhaps ?
Funny. Dockerhub was down during each of these collisions. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
Seems very obvious what is happening:
- Equipment made by the lowest bidder, from a business arm of the MIC.
- Navy Officers are ultimately in charge of navigation decisions.
- A boat named McCain, after a senator named McCain that We The People wanted gone from public view over 10 years ago.
- All u.s. government agencies, cabinets, and illegitimate acromyn-based agencies lie to We The People anytime someone is speaking.
- u.s. media is not reporting important facts and investigating the criminals and traitors in the oligarchy.
Incompetent equipment, incompetent navy leadership, boat karma from a bad choice in names, oppressive and lying government trying to manipulate We The People, and retarded and lying media cowtowing to the oilgarchy.
This was not a cyber attack. It was good ole Normal by the shitty people and places that crap on We The People every day.
"Fuck you, and fuck her too." - C Lo Green
Regardless of whether these were cyber-attacks (and yes, of course by Putin himself), one thing stands out: the navy is INCAPABLE TO OPERATE WITHOUT THE ELECTRONICS, and the CREWS ARE NOT WATCHING OUT FOR HAZARD. This makes the hugely expensive ships hugely vulnerable to magnetic pulse attacks. This is what happens when you do not use your MIND when designing things
This is what happens when you start networking computers on a Battlestar. Damn Cylons will get you every time.
A few years back I used to be (despite an Army paratrooper) in charge of a platoon to serve as boarding parties on pirate patrol in the Indian Ocean (Operation Atalanta) on board of one of our frigates. We moved in and out of the harbor of Djibouti, passing through the Gulf of Aden, a very busy shipping lane comparable to the situation down in Malaysia/Singapore. The ship did not rely just on radar/GPS to navigate those waters, but there were at all times at least 4 lookouts, in all directions, not only the one it was moving in, at night with NVG, that were scanning the surroundings at all time. While it was easy on patrol to miss those smaller dhows and particular the skiffs, specially in choppy sea way out on the ocean, there was no way that anyone would miss to spot a huge oil tanker or container ship on a collision course. There has to be a notorious lack of responsibility and oversight, among sailors and officers, both on board and in higher command, for this to happen repeatedly. Ignorance and arrogance kills...
There are internationally-agreed upon "rules of the road" for maritimne navigation.
The US Navy adheres to those rules as do all the other responsible nations (though admittedly anybody might throw them out in wartime)
The USNavy ships involved in these collisions were required to obey the rules just as the other ships were and the captains will be held to account if they broke the rules.
Congress does not like it when those big expensive warships they buy get broken - If the DoD does not get to the bottom of this soon there will be congressional hearings. Generals and Admirals do not like being hauled in front of congress.
It is 100% certain the captains involved will lose their commands since they are 100% resoponsible for EVERYTHING that happens on their ships. If there has been an equipment failure, the captains are responsible for the poor condition of their vessel and/or the poor training and supervision of the crew members responsible for using and maintaining it. If this was human error by the bridge crew and/or lookouts, navigators, helmsmen, etc then the captains are responsible for poor oversight/training of the people who screwed up. US Navy Captains are COMPLETELY responsible for their vessels and crews and this is made abundantly clear to them early in their careers, LONG before they get near the Captain's chair.
I learned this as a midshipman, YEARS before getting my commission as an Ensign (lowest-rank office in US Navy).
Maybe the US Navy isn't training people well, isn't operating safely (Navy ships do NOT have the standard beacons turned on that all other shipping always uses which identifies the ship ID and location), and is clearly broken as an organization. With 16 years of war (the longest ever), and with all sorts of personnel rotation standards violated everyday, it's not surprising that things break down. The system was never designed for this kind of situation.
Whoah -- Google "Naval Pregnancy Rates" turns up a wealth of info. Am interested in any articles you'd recommend. (apologies for dupe post. time matters.)