There's a fascinating and redacted interview with an "anonymous" subject about the disaster. To say the least it's an unsuccessful attempt to hide the identity of the individual:
"Q. So how did you get yourself started into submersible operations?
A. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic. When I set down the path to make that film, the first thing that I did was arrange to be introduced to the head of the submersible program at the P.P. Shirshov Institute in Moscow, a guy named..."
It appears that all the engineers -- system designer, material
engineer and structural analyst -- thought that OceanGate CEO was going to
kill himself:
If you ever find <name-of-the-engineer>, he’s not going
to have a whole lot of nice to say. He was very frustrated
with the company. (...) And I understand why. He thought
Stockton was going to kill himself.
And the director himself declined to dive on Titan when asked:
Now, the question is, why wouldn’t the engineer get inside
his own vehicle? It was because of what I felt -- and I have a
background in Navy diving in EOD operations. I knew firsthand
that the operations group was not the right group for that role,
and I told him as much, that I don’t trust operations and who he
has there.
idontwantthis 34 minutes ago [-]
I read that the pilot was also basically suicidal. His wife had died, and he was completely fine with the danger because he would die doing what he loved, and he didn't really want to live anymore.
djmips 15 minutes ago [-]
Wasn't the pilot Stockton Rush? His wife was alive. Who are you referring to? I tried to check your claim but I couldn't verify it.
vlovich123 2 hours ago [-]
Let’s hear from L Simpson. No, that’s too specific. Let’s hear from Lisa S.
vlovich123 1 hours ago [-]
Took me forever to find the actual quote - ChatGPT and Gemini kept trying to gaslight me that it’s not a real quote or that Willie said it to Bart until I gave the exact quote (at which point normal search engines were fine):
> A certain agitator, for privacy's sake, let's call her Lisa S. No, that's too obvious, let's say L. Simpson.
Lisa the Vegetarian
edoceo 50 minutes ago [-]
When I grow up I'm going to Bovine University!
bmurray7jhu 2 hours ago [-]
"I think the most dangerous part of our whole operation was these young software engineers puking over the railing in a high sea."
watersb 4 hours ago [-]
The SD card on the camera was intact but encrypted. Decrypting the data required a key stored on a separate SOM board, but the SOM was damaged. The investigation team delivered the SOM and SD card to the camera manufacturer in Newfoundland, and they were able to decrypt the card.
They found a couple of images, but
No data with a timestamp after May 16th was found on the camera, so it is likely that none of the data recorded on the SD Card were of the accident voyage or dive.
After all that work...
If you're interested in data recovery, you will enjoy reading this report, about 10 pages, clearly written. The technical language mentioned they didn't see a LUKS header on the card so they figured it was a custom dm_crypt setup.
cloudbonsai 2 hours ago [-]
> No data with a timestamp after May 16th was found on the camera, so it is likely that none of the data recorded on the SD Card were of the accident voyage or dive.
Evidently the camera data was recorded to an external SSD card
in the mission computer when the accident occurred.
The investigation team actually managed to salvage the PC as well:
Wow. SubC’s software engineering needs some work. They thought the camera’s file system was unencrypted, when it was encrypted. They didn’t know where the keys were to decrypt it. It turned out the key was written unencrypted to a UFS storage device. There was a file written to /mnt/nas/Stills, which indicates that the camera was to writing to a remote file system that wasn’t mounted.
userbinator 3 hours ago [-]
They thought the camera’s file system was unencrypted, when it was encrypted.
Unfortunately this situation is likely to get more common in the future as the "security" crowd keep pushing for encryption-by-default with no regard to whether the user wants or is even aware of it.
Encryption is always a tradeoff; it trades the possibility of unauthorised access with the possibility of even the owner losing access permanently. IMHO this tradeoff needs careful consideration and not blind application.
2 hours ago [-]
jiggawatts 2 hours ago [-]
This is why I always shake my head when the Reddit armchair security experts say "The data wasn't even encrypted!? Amateur hour!" in response to some PII leak.
Sure, sure buddy, I'll encrypt all of my PII data so nobody can access it... including the web application server.
Okay, fine, I'll decrypt it on the fly with a key in some API server... now the web server had unencrypted access to it, which sounds bad, but that's literally the only way that it can process and serve the data to users in a meaningful way! Now if someone hacks the web app server -- the common scenario -- then the attacker has unencrypted access!
I can encrypt the database, but at what layer? Storage? Cloud storage is already encrypted! Backups? Yeah, sure, but then what happens in a disaster? Who's got the keys? Are they contactable at 3am?
Etc, etc...
It's not only not as simple as ticking an "encrypted: yes" checkbox, it's maximally difficult, with a very direct tradeoff between accessibility and protection. The sole purpose of encrypting data is to prevent access!
Zak 2 hours ago [-]
> Removed SD card. The manufacturer of the camera had requested certain components of
the device be redacted. Portions of this image have been redacted.
And so it is, but anyone who has ever seen a Sandisk SD card knows what they're looking at. I can even tell it's not the fastest V90 speed.
The things companies try ineffectually to keep out of public view are weird.
I'm confused. Why are decryption keys in NVRAM? That seems to negate the purpose of at-rest encryption if you can retrieve keys from the device even after shutdown.
daemonologist 3 hours ago [-]
Well they're encrypting an SD card, so this still defends against its being removed from the camera and stolen or left in a bar or something.
But honestly from the rest of the story it sounds like the camera manufacturer was selling their pressure housing moreso than the off-the-shelf camera hardware inside, and was not particularly concerned with whether/how the storage was encrypted.
rozab 3 hours ago [-]
What's with the entire dev board crammed in there? Is that... normal? What board is it?
daemonologist 3 hours ago [-]
It appears to be a Teensy 3.2
The "carrier" that everything rides on within the housing is clearly FDM printed as well. I assume these cameras (rated to 6,000 meters) are rather low volume products.
buildbot 32 seconds ago [-]
It honestly makes sense. You are paying for the pressure engineering, and can take advantage of an off the shelf camera system. Maybe use a special lens or filter or something but why bother customizing the software/hardware of the camera much.
They probably should still know what it's doing though...
quamserena 1 hours ago [-]
I have seen engineers slap Teensies on a PCB and call it a day, so it’s definitely normal. It’s faster than having to route your MCU, USB, debugger, etc. manually, so there isn’t really a drawback as long as it physically fits there.
duskwuff 3 hours ago [-]
The small board on the left is unmistakably a Teensy 3.2:
"Q. So how did you get yourself started into submersible operations?
A. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic. When I set down the path to make that film, the first thing that I did was arrange to be introduced to the head of the submersible program at the P.P. Shirshov Institute in Moscow, a guy named..."
https://media.defense.gov/2025/Sep/17/2003800984/-1/-1/0/CG-...
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?ID=17236880&Fi...
It appears that all the engineers -- system designer, material engineer and structural analyst -- thought that OceanGate CEO was going to kill himself:
And the director himself declined to dive on Titan when asked:> A certain agitator, for privacy's sake, let's call her Lisa S. No, that's too obvious, let's say L. Simpson.
Lisa the Vegetarian
They found a couple of images, but
After all that work...If you're interested in data recovery, you will enjoy reading this report, about 10 pages, clearly written. The technical language mentioned they didn't see a LUKS header on the card so they figured it was a custom dm_crypt setup.
Evidently the camera data was recorded to an external SSD card in the mission computer when the accident occurred.
The investigation team actually managed to salvage the PC as well:
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?ID=19169363&Fi...
Sadly it turned into a compressed ball of metal...
Also a good video from Scott Manley: https://youtu.be/qMUjCZ7MMWQ
Unfortunately this situation is likely to get more common in the future as the "security" crowd keep pushing for encryption-by-default with no regard to whether the user wants or is even aware of it.
Encryption is always a tradeoff; it trades the possibility of unauthorised access with the possibility of even the owner losing access permanently. IMHO this tradeoff needs careful consideration and not blind application.
Sure, sure buddy, I'll encrypt all of my PII data so nobody can access it... including the web application server.
Okay, fine, I'll decrypt it on the fly with a key in some API server... now the web server had unencrypted access to it, which sounds bad, but that's literally the only way that it can process and serve the data to users in a meaningful way! Now if someone hacks the web app server -- the common scenario -- then the attacker has unencrypted access!
I can encrypt the database, but at what layer? Storage? Cloud storage is already encrypted! Backups? Yeah, sure, but then what happens in a disaster? Who's got the keys? Are they contactable at 3am?
Etc, etc...
It's not only not as simple as ticking an "encrypted: yes" checkbox, it's maximally difficult, with a very direct tradeoff between accessibility and protection. The sole purpose of encrypting data is to prevent access!
And so it is, but anyone who has ever seen a Sandisk SD card knows what they're looking at. I can even tell it's not the fastest V90 speed.
The things companies try ineffectually to keep out of public view are weird.
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?ID=19169363&Fi...
Full docket:
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/?NTSBNumber=DCA23FM036
But honestly from the rest of the story it sounds like the camera manufacturer was selling their pressure housing moreso than the off-the-shelf camera hardware inside, and was not particularly concerned with whether/how the storage was encrypted.
The "carrier" that everything rides on within the housing is clearly FDM printed as well. I assume these cameras (rated to 6,000 meters) are rather low volume products.
They probably should still know what it's doing though...
https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy32.html
As to what it's doing in there, I have no idea.
edit: probably? It was posted at the Teensy forum about a month ago.
https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/the-deepest-teensy....