Divers searching British tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s sunken superyacht off Sicily have found safes holding potentially sensitive intelligence data, sources have claimed.
Local law enforcement reportedly now fear that foreign governments such as China and Russia may become interested in the boat – and have asked for extra surveillance to protect it, CNN reports.
Through Lynch’s companies, he was associated with multiple intelligence services – including British and American – particularly through his cyber security company, Darktrace.
The Bayesian boat is believed to have watertight safes with two super-encrypted hard drives containing confidential intelligence information, an official within the recovery team told the US new outlet.
Lying at a 50-metre depth, the wreckage is expected to be raised in the following weeks as part of a criminal investigation into its sinking on 19 August.
Francesco Venuto, of the Sicilian Civil Protection Agency, told CNN: “A formal request has been accepted and implemented for additional security of the wreckage until it can be raised.”
Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among eight people to die when the yacht sank last month.
Mike Lynch had ties to spy chiefs and intelligence agencies
A report has emerged classified intelligence information possibly sitting 50 metres deep in the Bayesian superyacht.
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who died in the sunken yacht, was known to have links with intelligence services around the world, including British and American.
This link partly came from his cybersecurity firm Darktrace, which he founded in 2011 in partnership with former UK intelligence officials, Politico report.
Co-founder Stephen Huxter became managing director of the company. He previously ranked highly in MI5’s cyber defense team.
Darktrace is used to fight off cyberattacks, by learning the behavioural patterns of actors in an organisation and detecting any unusual activity.
Former MI5 chief Jonathan Evans sat on the company onboard, and Jim Penrose, who worked on the US National Security Agency, led the company’s operation in America.
A number of other intelligence figures were also involved. with Darktrace.
Lynch also had other ventures which were linked with spy agencies. Cambridge Neurodynamics, a company specialising in fingerprint recognition for computers, was contracted by UK intelligence services.
Bayesian yacht may contain safes with confidential intelligence data, sources say
Divers have requested heightened security after finding watertight safes which may contain highly classified information, sources told CNN.
Authorities confirmed that they are seeking heightened security, with sources suggesting confidential intelligence information on the boat may be of interest to Russia and China.
An official working with the team salvaging the boat said the vessel is believed to contain watertight safes with two super-encrypted hard drives, CNN reports.
Francesco Venuto of the Sicilian Civil Protection Agency told CNN: “A formal request has been accepted and implemented for additional security of the wreckage until it can be raised.”
Bayesian captain said to be ‘living darkest days of his life’
Three crew members including the yacht’s captain are under investigation, with plans being discussed to raise the yacht from the ocean bed to assist enquiries.
Among those killed were Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who had been due to begin studying at Oxford University in September, the yacht’s chef and four other family friends and associates.
Mike Lynch net worth: How the billionaire made his money
Mike Lynch was frequently described as the Bill Gates of Britain for founding Autonomy – one of the biggest software firms on the planet
Former captain claims Mike Lynch’s wife was always concerned about boat safety
The wife of Mike Lynch, 57-year-old Angela Bacares managed to escape to safety after suffering cuts from broken glass as she went to try and save her husband and daughter, according to la Repubblica.
The newspaper said she told doctors that at 4am, the boat had tilted and she and her husband were woken up.
Former captain Stephen Edwards told The Telegraph, Ms Bacares “always wants to know what is happening and what the crew are doing”.
“She is always the first person to come up to the bridge if she hears us scuttling about up there. That could explain why she was saved and Mike wasn’t.”
The “worn out” captain of the Bayesian superyacht that sank off Sicily killing seven including billionaire Mike Lynch and his teenage daughter is not responding to prosecutors’ questions as they pursue manslaughter charges, his lawyer said.
James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealand national, is under investigation for possible manslaughter and culpable shipwreck charges and was questioned by the Termini Imerese prosecutors three times.
His lawyer Aldo Mordiglia said of his client: “He just exercised his right to remain silent, probably prosecutors were expecting that.”
Cutfield was among 15 survivors of the sinking on August 19 that killed Mr Lynch, his daughter Hannah and five others.
“The captain exercised his right to remain silent for two fundamental reasons,” lawyer Giovanni Rizzuti told reporters.
“First, he’s very worn out. Second, we were appointed only on Monday and for a thorough and correct defence case we need to acquire a set of data that at the moment we don’t have.”
Being placed under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow.
‘Mike Lynch files may be target for hostile spy agencies’
Divers are searching the sea floor for Mike Lynch’s high-tech hard drives before they can fall into enemy hands reports La Repubblica – Italy’s second-biggest newspaper.
Sources told the paper the disks held: “the great digital archive of the IT entrepreneur whose clients included the British MI5, the American NSA and the Israeli services”.
The Italian newspaper said the “super drives” are protected by “cutting-edge encryption”.
The Sun reported the drives now could be a target for the hostile spy agencies of Russia, China, and Iran as they seek to steal valuable secrets.
Professor fears more deaths by ‘medicanes’ after Bayesian tragedy
Professor Yoav Yair, Dean of the School of Sustainability at Reichman University in Israel, told the Mirror that storms dubbed ‘medicanes’ – Mediterranean hurricanes – could cause similar sinkings like the Bayesian superyacht.
He said: “It is not a matter of if this (the Bayesian disaster) will happen again, but rather it’s when and where.
“In the last couple of years we have seen medicanes – which are a new phenomena. These are hurricane-like storms that pack a lot of energy, and create flash flooding, torrential rains, lightning, hail and severe sustained winds. The 2023 “Daniel” medicane destroyed Libya and caused over 30,000 deaths there.
“The sea surface temperature has risen globally and in the Med as well, charging the atmosphere with increased fluxes of water vapor, which means a higher potential for massive storms.”
Darktrace set to leave London Stock Exchange at end of September
Darktrace shares are set to stop trading publicly at the end of September, after the company set a timetable for its blockbuster private equity takeover to be completed.
The private equity group Thoma Bravo struck an almost 5.31 billion dollar (£4.3 billion) deal to buy Darktrace, co-founded by Mike Lynch, in April.
It marks one of the biggest take-private deals for a London-listed company in recent years, and will see Darktrace leave the FTSE 100 on October 1.
Founded in 2013, Cambridge-based Darktrace is a cybersecurity firm best known for using artificial intelligence to scan for hacks and data leaks inside IT networks.
The update comes after Poppy Gustafsson stepped down as chief executive earlier in September amid the takeover.
Ms Gustafsson helped to set up the Cambridge-based company in 2013 alongside Autonomy founder Mike Lynch.
Mr Lynch, and his daughter Hannah, were among seven people to die after the Bayesian superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily last month.
Investigators hope to recover data on sinking of Bayesian
Navy divers recovered hard drives of the video surveillance system on board the Bayesian hopefully revealing the final moments before the tragic sinking of the superyacht.
In the engine room there were the hard disks that catalogued the parameters regarding the electric and thermal propulsion.
“We hope to be able to read something from the media”, an investigator told La Repubblica. They added “Unfortunately they are standard models that are not resistant to water and pressure”.
There was no black box on board the 700-tonne sailing vessel that sank in minutes. It was not required to have one, as it was not a commercial cruise ship.
Source: independent.co.uk