What's happening at the #Titanic site will likely be a tragedy.
@OceanGate's page on why they didn't seek certifications / classing for the Titan submersible & that design safety regulations are slow & constrain innovation... reads differently now.
Imagine if a car manufacturer told you: this car isn't crash certified because it won't prevent people from driving the car badly.
"No other submersible currently utilizes real-time monitoring...we want to know why"
Hubris from @OceanGate even as they dismiss the existing standards derived from many tragedies that came before.
There's a nuanced, necessary risk balancing whenever you push at edges.
Innovation is hard if you over-constrain yourself to old rules... but scrap them all & you should expect to experience some irreversible lessons.
Nowhere more so than in the sea's unforgiving depths.
Exploration & adventure have unavoidable risks.
This is fine.
But I sincerely hope that the souls on that submersible truly understood them, and that @OceanGate objectively explained them *without* being colored by the kind of rhetoric found on their website.
"if you are lost so are we"
Comms failed & the #OceanGate submersible was lost for several hours on an earlier #Titanic dive.
The dark irony of what is unfolding is not lost on maritime historians
Those familiar w/marine environments will find the consumer grade electronics beyond puzzling.
Salt water, condensation, humidity, etc. are kryptonite to electronics.
And exactly the kinds of things you'd find in a submersible diving into cold places.
Thinking on @mercoglianos' point that the #Titanic is what got us the first convention on Safety of Life at Sea aka #SOLAS.
It continues to save uncountable lives.
101 years later & an outcome we can hope for is a fresh focus on safety regs for subsurface adventure tourism.
While the game controller (CEO said they had spares) is something we can all understand...
I think it's important to think of it as a indicator of the overall risk management & minimum-viable-submersible philosophy that seems to have been at work all over.
Pics: ballast.
"#OceanGate offers you the the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity ...[of] SAFELY diving to the Titanic wreckage site"
The breathless 2023 #Titanic dive promotional video puts safety in the first sentence.
UPDATE: an #OceanGate employee was allegedly fired for refusing to greenlight manned tests over safety concerns.
"the current 'experimental' approach... could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry"
BREAKING: NSO Group liable for #Pegasus hacking of @WhatsApp users.
Big win for spyware victims.
Big loss for NSO.
Bad time to be a spyware company.
Landmark case. Huge implications. 1/ 🧵
2/ In 2019, 1,400 @WhatsApp users were targeted with #Pegasus.
WhatsApp did the right thing & sued NSO Group.
NSO has spent 5 years trying to claim that they are above the law.
And engaged in all sorts of maneuvering.
With this order, the music stopped and NSO is now without a chair.
3/ Today, the court decided that enough was enough with NSO's gambits & efforts to hide source code.
Judge Hamilton granted @WhatsApp's motion for summary judgement against the #Pegasus spyware maker.
The judge finds NSO's hacking violated the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (#CFAA), California state anti-fraud law #CDFA, and was a breach of contract.
What happens next? The trial proceeds only on the issue of resolving damages stemming from NSO's hacking.
Company has a majority of the US market share for homes & small biz.
Concerns stem from repeated use in cyberattacks from #China & concerns over supply chain security.
Reportedly an office of @CommerceGov has subpoenaed the company. 1/
Story by @heathersomervil @dnvolz & @aviswanatha
2/ @TPLINK has quickly grown market share, even as concerns have grown over vulnerabilities in the routers being used in #China-linked hacking operations.
3/ As Microsoft's @MsftSecIntel reported earlier this year, for example, #TPLINK routers make up the bulk of the CovertNetwork-1658 attack infrastructure.
This operator was conducting so-called password spray attacks, and taking steps to be discrete.
The credentials are then used by multiple #China-based threat actors....
Use only end-to-end encrypted communications says @CISAgov.
YES!
End-to-end encryption is critical infrastructure for a safe society.
Plenty of other solid guidance for mobile users at risk here.
Let's look at their #iPhone & #Android-specific recs... 1/
2/ @CISAgov's top recommendation for Apple users is to✅ enable #LockdownMode
It's my top guidance for high-risk #iPhone users..
Because as researchers tracking sophisticated threats we see Lockdown Mode blunt advanced attacks...
Other solid guidance:
✅Protect your DNS
✅Disable fallback to SMS
✅Enroll in iCloud Private Relay
✅Trim App permissions.
3/ @CISAgov's guidance for #Android starts from the unavoidable fact that many Android manufacturers truly don't respect users security or privacy.
So ✅pick a company that won't leave you insecure after 2-3 years.
Other good guidance here includes...
✅ Only use RCS with end-to-end encryption
✅ Using Android Private DNS
✅ Use Enhanced Protection for Safe Browsing
✅ Google Play Protect
✅ Manage permissions.
3/ There's an active global market for companies whose product line revolves around abusing the trusting nature of call routing to conduct surveillance.
We @citizenlab ran scans & mapped deployments of this tech by one such player: Circles.
Circles had previously merged with NSO Group, which makes #Pegasus.
NEW: police in #Serbia caught unlocking activists phones with @Cellebrite's mobile forensic tools & planting spyware on them.
Incredibly troubling investigation by @AmnestyTech delves into how the Serbian authorities mix a toxic brew of repression out of homegrown + foreign mercenary spyware like #Pegasus + $CLBT's forensic tools possibly supplied as part of foreign assistance from #Norway. 1/
3/ When the couple was eventually released , Parubets was eventually able to pick up his devices from the #FSB at the dreaded Lubyanka building (former KGB HQ, also a prison).
As a programmer, he carefully scrutinized his returned devices & noticed a weird notification on his Android...