John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Jun 20, 2023 14 tweets 11 min read Read on X
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.

oceangate.com/news-and-media… ImageImageImage
Imagine if a car manufacturer told you: this car isn't crash certified because it won't prevent people from driving the car badly. Image
"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. Image
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. ImageImageImageImage
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. ImageImageImageImage
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. Image
"#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 details look quite ominous.

By @DanielStrauss4 h/t @ThatVDOVault
newrepublic.com/post/173802/mi… ImageImageImageImage
"the current 'experimental' approach... could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry"

Unanimous letter of concern from @MTSociety to the #OceanGate CEO.

Via @nytimes
int.nyt.com/data/documentt… Image
Correction: these are drop weights.

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More from @jsrailton

Oct 10
WOW: @Apple donating a thousand new #iPhone17 s to civil society at-risk from mercenary spyware.

Good. This will help get Apple's most secure devices to where they need to be..

Truth is: those at the greatest risk from spyware are often least able to afford more secure phones 1/Image
2/ Memory Integrity Enforcement = big deal Radically hardens iPhones from common attack vectors.

So it was a bittersweet to see this announcement and think "yeah it's going to be a long time before highest risk ppl can get them."..
3/ You're reading this on a device that is probably more secure thanks to the vigilance of an activist somewhere...

Seems @Apple recognizes this & also knows how much of a game changer getting their most secure devices into the hands of civil society could be.

security.apple.com/blog/apple-sec…
Read 4 tweets
Oct 10
NEW: fresh trouble for mercenary spyware companies like NSO Group.

@Apple launching substantial bounties on the zero-click exploits that feed the supply chain behind products like Pegasus & Paragon's Graphite.

With bonuses, exploit developers can hit $5 million payouts. 1/Image
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2/ Apple is introducing Target Flags which speeds the process of getting exploits found & submitters rewarded.

This faster tempo is also a strike against the mercenary spyware ecosystem.

And the expanded categories also hit more widely against commercial surveillance vendors. Image
3/ If I contemplating investing in spyware companies I'd want to carefully evaluate whether their exploit pipeline can match what @apple just threw down.

security.apple.com/blog/apple-sec…
Read 4 tweets
Oct 10
NEW: Pegasus spyware coming to America?

An ex-Adam Sandler producer is again trying acquire the notorious NSO Group.

Simonds fronted this before in 2023 & failed. But the backers of this idea haven't given up.

Where is the money coming from?

The unanswered questions should worry every American 1/Image
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2/ Back in 2023 it wasn't clear to me where the money backing Robert Simonds big spyware plans came from.

It still isn't.

So, whose money will actually be buying Pegasus?

And what is the end goal?

Report by @globesnews' @assafgi
globes.co.il/news/article.a…Image
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@globesnews @assafgi 3/ Robert Simonds on why🇨🇳#China's @TencentGlobal is a great owner of his @STXfilms.

He has zero experience with the spyware industry, but is once more showing a sudden focus on acquiring the company that makes #Pegasus.

Read 6 tweets
Sep 2
NEW: foreign mercenary spyware is coming to the US.

ICE just quietly unsuspended contract with spyware maker #Paragon.

Remember them?

Caught earlier this year being used to hack journalists.

Bad move for Americans rights, national security & counterintelligence 1/Image
2/ #Paragon was co-founded in Israel in 2019 by ex head of Israel's NSA equivalent (Unit 8200) w/ major backing from former Israeli PM Ehud Barak.

Pitched themselves as stealthy & abuse-proof alternative to NSO Group's Pegasus.

& have been trying to get into the US market for years.Image
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3/For a long time all we knew about Paragon was their performance as a 'virtuous' spyware company with values.

All that came to a crashing halt in 2025 when they got very caught, helping customers hack targets across @WhatsApp.

WhatsApp did the right thing & notified users.

By @razhael
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Read 18 tweets
Aug 29
NEW: @WhatsApp caught & fixed a sophisticated zero click attack...

Now they've published an advisory about it.

Say attackers combined the exploit with an @Apple vulnerability to hack a specific group of targets (i.e. this wasn't pointed at everybody)

Quick thoughts 1/Image
Wait, you say, haven't I heard of @WhatsApp zero-click exploits before?

You have.

A big user base makes a platform big target for exploit development.

Think about it from the attacker's perspective: an exploit against a popular messenger gives you potential access to a lot of devices.

You probably want maximum mileage from that painstakingly developed, weaponized, and tested exploit code you created/ purchased (or got bundled into your Pegasus subscription).
3/ The regular tempo of large platforms catching sophisticated exploits is a good sign.

They're paying attention & devoting resources to this growing category of highly targeted, sophisticated attacks.

But it's also a reminder of the magnitude of the threat out there...

whatsapp.com/security/advis…
Read 4 tweets
Aug 20
WHOA: megapublisher @axelspringer is asking a German court to ban an ad-blocker.

Their claim that should make everyone nervous:

The HTML/ CSS code of websites are protected computer programs.

And influencing they are displayed (e.g by removing ads) violates copyright.

1/Image
2/ Preventing ad-blocking would be a huge blow to German cybersecurity and privacy.

There are critical security & privacy reasons to influence how a websites code gets displayed.

Like stripping out dangerous code & malvertising.

Or blocking unwanted trackers.

This is why most governments do it on their systems.Image
3/Defining HTML/CSS as a protected computer program will quickly lead to absurdities touching every corner of the internet.

Just think of the potential infringements:

-Screen readers for the blind
-'Dark mode' bowser extensions
-Displaying snippets of code in a university class
-Inspecting & modifying code in your own browser
-Website translators
Read 7 tweets

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