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.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with John Scott-Railton

John Scott-Railton Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @jsrailton

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
Image
Image
Image
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
Image
Image
Image
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
Jul 10
NEW: Mexico's former president under investigation for taking bribes from spyware industry.

Contracts included #Pegasus deal.

Story from @TheRecord_Media's Suzanne Smalley 1/Image
Image
Image
2/ Mexico's former president is denying everything...

But folks may recall that Pegasus was massively and systematically abused in Mexico.

Against journalists, spouses of cartel victims, lawyers, families of cartel-disappeared people, anti-corruption groups etc. etc.

There were so many cases that we eventually had EIGHT investigative reports...
therecord.media/former-mexican…Image
3/ What still gives me chills is how many cases surfaced of people killed by cartels... or their family members... getting targeted with Pegasus spyware.

The #PegasusProject found even more potential cases in Mexico. Image
Image
Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
Jun 18
🚨NEW REPORT: exposing a new hacking tactic.

🇷🇺Russian state-backed hackers used an App-Specific Password attack against prominent Russia expert @KeirGiles & others.

It's like they know what we all expect from them...and then did the opposite 1/

By us @citizenlab & @google's GTIGImage
Image
Image
2/ Let's begin: @KeirGiles gets a message purporting to be from @StateDept asking for a consultation.

The attackers send the message from a @gmail, but CC'd a bunch of email addresses @ state.gov.

Strong credibility signal to have a bunch of gov ppl on the CC line right?

Well, what the attackers were counting on is that the State Dept mailserver just accepts all email addresses without emitting a bounce.

So they seem to have just created some fake State Dept staff names and addresses.Image
3/ The attackers wait for the 2nd interaction to introduce the pivotal deception: getting @KeirGiles to 'connect to a secure platform.'

In the next days they patiently walk him through what they want him to do, even sending a very official looking (but fake) State Dept. documentImage
Image
Read 10 tweets
Jun 12
🚨NEW INVESTIGATION: We just forensically unmasked #Paragon's Apple spyware.

Zero-click targets: Journalists. In 🇪🇺Europe.

Like 🇮🇹Italian reporter @ciropellegrino.

Reopen's #Italy's spyware scandal.

Follows our @citizenlab investigation of their Android spyware. 1/ Image
2/ Back in April, @Apple sent out a threat notification to a select group of users. Some got in touch with us @citizenlab to get analyzed.

They'd been targeted with a sophisticated zero-click attack (think: no click, no attachment to open, no mistake needed...).Image
3/ While my brilliant colleague @billmarczak was working on the phone of a prominent European journalist, he made a smoking gun discovery:

Requests to server matching our P1 fingerprint for #Paragon's graphite.

Paragon's 'undetectable' Apple spyware had just been found...Image
Image
Image
Read 13 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(