Category Archives: Sailing

Sailing, Security

AC34 Team Oracle Caught Cheating…Again

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This is the third incident, as far as I can tell. The first incident, spying on competitor designs, resulted in a penalty for Oracle. The second incident was when Oracle tried to use the Artemis incident to force competitors to change their design, and was rebuffed. Now Oracle is accused of yet another design-related incident.

Skipper Max Sirena of Italy’s Luna Rossa is the latest America’s Cup competitor to accuse defending champion Oracle Team USA of cheating in what potentially could be one of the biggest scandals in the regatta’s 162-year history

As I’ve said before it’s obvious Oracle’s design is inferior. Team New Zealand has out-innovated the American team and Oracle is cheating to try and catch up.

There is irony in these incidents. The Oracle captain recently said in an interview that their design changes were done, they were focused on sailing. In fact, he emphasized that making design changes at this late date could interfere with his ability to focus and become a better sailor; arguing that design change could actually have a trade-off or hurt their chances.

There also is a question of what Team Oracle management is going to do about being caught cheating on design, yet again. Here’s how their CEO has responded:

“I don’t think it’s right that if a few people break a rule on a team of 130 people, that the whole team gets branded as cheats,” Coutts said in his first public comments in the week since Oracle announced that it was forfeiting its overall championships from the first two seasons of the ACWS after the violations were discovered.

[…]

Coutts used the latest performance enhancement drug scandal in Major League Baseball as an analogy, saying that if certain players were suspended, “does that mean the whole team are cheaters? I don’t think that’s right to draw that conclusion.”

That is an interesting ethical question for the CEO to pose. I would rather hear him say “I take responsibility for the actions of my team” or “I am in charge and this is unacceptable, this will not be tolerated and will not happen again.”

Instead, we hear that Team America is going to play victim to their own team? In risk management terms, that should be a giant red flag. This is precisely why the U.S. government moved forward the Sarbanes-Oxley regulation. Too many CEOs had claimed they had no idea about fraud under their watch and objected to “the whole team” being branded cheaters.

It is possible that some rogue member of the team was acting independently. That seems unlikely given that it is not an isolated incident. It also seems unlikely, given the response from the CEO is to play victim and tell other teams to stop pointing fingers.

I don’t think it’s right that other teams should use this as an orchestrated PR campaign to slander another team when there’s a jury process going on and the facts haven’t been established.

Strange perspective. Cheating doesn’t require PR orchestration. Fraud doesn’t require PR orchestration. When it’s discovered, when an investigation begins, the expectation and the norm is negative press. It would require orchestration to do the opposite, for competitors to be complimentary and supportive; to say “don’t judge” or “don’t blame management, everyone has bad apples”.

More to the point when the CEO of UCLA tried to say that patient privacy breaches were the result of isolated staff it turned out to be exactly the opposite. A sting operation by Farah Fawcett and her Doctor proved that management wasn’t taking responsibility. Widespread and systemic security failures continued despite firing “isolated staff”. Eventually outside investigators were brought in and not long after the state of California passed two new laws to hold executive management accountable.

The sad fact is Team Oracle management is not talking about how they abhor cheating or how they will stake their reputation on a fair game. They are most likely trying to cheat their way through a design failure. They’ve tried spying, they’ve tried blocking the other designs, and now they’re accused of making unauthorized changes.

After decades of Americans trying to hold top management accountable for the actions of their entire team, it is the statements by the CEO of Team Oracle that are making America look bad.

Coutts admitted last week that someone with the syndicate illegally placed weights in the bows of three 45-foot catamarans without the knowledge of the skippers or management. One of the boats was loaned to Olympic star Ben Ainslie, who is sailing with Oracle Team USA this summer in hopes of launching a British challenge for the 35th America’s Cup.

Coutts said then that it was “a ridiculous mistake” because the weights “didn’t affect the performance.” Oracle forfeited its results from the four ACWS regattas in question, and its two overall season championships.

Someone made a mistake. Don’t blame the team. There was no real need to cheat. These are not phrases that engender trust. Quite the opposite, they lead to distrust of management.

Coutts’ risk approach does not sound far from what the utility industry once used to skirt regulations — hire a “designated felon” to the team. A CEO could claim she/he was “without the knowledge” of violations and basically pay someone else to go to jail or take the fall on their behalf.

History, Sailing, Security

#AC34Fatigue “Look at My Penis Go”

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Seems like most people I run into lately in SF ask me what I think of the America’s Cup. Maybe it’s a generic conversation starter. I take it as a serious question. Usually the conversation centers around the lack of public interest, the huge amount of money…

I thought it was hard to sum up the event until a friend described it like this:

It’s a “Look At My Penis Go!” event

That, in a nutshell, is what we have now. Who wants to watch? Oracle seems to have created a giant embarrassment.

But seriously, the sailing community has left the show, the general public isn’t coming. Some members of the teams even tell the public the event for them is “like being in jail”…so what is going on? Here’s a few guesses based on recent experience.

Sailing community

Ellison told the esteemed St Francis Yacht Club many years ago he wanted to take over and run the Cup his way. When the local club balked at total-control negotiation, he walked a few steps to the next club. Golden Gate actually heard the fight and invited him over. Golden Gate openly admits they did it for the money; Ellison could do whatever he wanted if he gave them enough money to stay open.

Some have tried to describe this union as a poor guy and a rich guy working together, or the community working with a big company; but everyone knows Oracle doesn’t play that way. They took the place over and run it their way.

Oracle’s split from the St Francis community could have been a chance to pressure an old stodgy club to become more relevant to experimentation and innovation, becoming more inclusive. That would have been interesting. Instead, it looks like Ellison fell out with them for the opposite reason. St Francis is not exclusive enough — it has people he doesn’t want to listen to!

It’s perhaps worth adding here that when the AC45 were racing in front of the St. Francis clubhouse I walked up to the entrance with my reciprocal membership card in hand. A old man at the door stopped me and said “sorry, when the America’s Cup is here we don’t honor reciprocal membership status.”

Annoyed but not dissuaded I walked 100 feet away and sat on the rocks by the water with 100s of other people gathering. Soon I became the unofficial announcer for the shoreline. I explained why China’s roundings were slow and uncoordinated, people asked me for blow-by-blow sports-casting…it turned out to be an amazing experience helping the public understand what was happening.

The strangest part of all, perhaps, is when a guy I had sailed with on long-distance coastal races walked up (he was rejected from St. Francis also) and started to ask me about the dynamics of multi-hull speed and handling. I realized at that moment the most experienced, seasoned mono-hull racers didn’t see what I could see after years of racing an A-Cat. We became a sort-of sports-cast team, he would ask general sailboat racing questions and I would color with specifics and stories. The crowd loved it.

Who is the Steve Madden of sailing? We need one. Someone funny, who gets the game, who speaks at the common person’s level; someone who can’t be and doesn’t want to be locked up inside some exclusive club for hat-less VIPs. The club commodore since then (perhaps after realizing there was low demand) has sent a letter inviting us lowly reciprocal members to come visit during the races.

After the club denied me access I had a great time sharing the Cup experience outside with the unwashed, the uninitiated, the non-sailors. There was no sailing community connection. Even professional sailors I contacted to come watch at the club were off sailing in other events, unimpressed with the AC34 races.

General public

Number 3 (just behind LA and Muni) in the list of Things SF Love to Hate is Larry Ellison:

There really aren’t many beloved billionaire CEOs out there, but the Oracle one takes the booby prize. If his lavish lifestyle and conspicuous mansions weren’t enough to sour his standing in the city, Ellison’s campaign to bring the America’s Cup to town has done the trick. There’s been more headache than economic benefit from the Cup so far.

I walked down to the waterfront recently. A very active and respected member of the local sailing community asked me to have lunch. As I arrived, an AC72 ambled in the water nearby. There was no crowd. The general public simply didn’t come.

He was looking out across the empty water when I asked “what happened to race day”. He laughed and said “We hoped for twelve boats but with only four total and three working…nobody wants to watch a race of one. Today is no different than any other day — there you see a boat sailing on the Bay. The crowds won’t come. So let’s eat…”

Insiders

To put it bluntly, I was invited to the America’s Cup backstage. I brought with me someone instrumental to America’s Cup history and present success — a legend in sailboat racing. I was honored to be there with him. In fact, I couldn’t believe this was happening.

For 30 seconds it was momentous, as if my entire life of sailing had led up to this moment. We arrived and shook hands with an official of the AC34 sales team. And then we were asked…”have you ever heard of the America’s Cup before?”

*screeching record needle*

Awkward. We then were told by this used-car salesman looking guy with a giant diamond ring and popped white collar that the Cup is under new management and they’re doing things right now — they are lining up a target audience of “generic sports enthusiasts who can pay $40K for exclusivity seats and don’t really care what they’re watching.”

*car driving off cliff and exploding fireballs*

I flew out of that meeting like an AC72 downwind in the Bay on an August afternoon. St Francis seemed quaint and community-focused compared to this nauseating group that stood for what? Where did the love of sailing go? Who was this idiot talking with me (I still have his card) and his sidekick (she later turned her back on us, literally, to give us the sign we should leave).

Don’t get me wrong, I love the America’s Cup, I love sailing. In fact, my entire house has been decorated for decades with the history of America’s Cup contenders (Tommy Sopwith’s 1934 Endeavour, Vanderbilt’s 1903 Reliance, the amazing Enterprise of 1930). And I’ve grown up sailing, and been fortunate enough to have sailed with and raced against many of the people working on the current campaigns.

In fact, I may still write up a detailed explanation of how the boats work, the amazing transformation in technology and teams, or do some impromptu race commentary. There’s so much to talk about.

But WTF Larry? We’re losing the audience, including me.

Energy, Food, Sailing, Security

#HeavyD and the Evil Hostess Principle

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At this year’s ISACA-SF conference I will present how to stop malicious attacks against data mining and machine learning.

First, the title of the talk uses the tag #HeavyD. Let me explain why I think this is more than just a reference to the hiphop artist or nuclear physics.

HeavyD
The Late Great Heavy D

Credit for the term goes to @RSnake and @joshcorman. It came up as we were standing on a boat and bantering about the need for better terms than “Big Data”. At first it was a joke and then I realized we had come upon a more fun way to describe the weight of big data security.

What is weight?

Way back in 2006 Gill gave me a very tiny and light racing life-jacket. I noted it was not USCG Type III certified (65+ newtons). It seemed odd to get race equipment that wasn’t certified, since USCG certification is required to race in US Sailing events. Then I found out the Europeans believe survival of sailors requires about 5 fewer newtons than the US authorities.

Gill Buoyancy Aid
Awesome Race Equipment, but Not USCG Approved

That’s a tangent but perhaps it helps frame a new discussion. We think often about controls to protect data sets of a certain size, which implies a measure at rest. Collecting every DB we can and putting it in a central hadoop, that’s large.

If we think about protecting large amounts of data relative to movement then newton units come to mind. Think of measuring “large” in terms of a control or countermeasure — the force required to make one kilogram of mass go faster at a rate of one meter per second:

Newtons

Hold onto that thought for a minute.

Second, I will present on areas of security research related to improving data quality. I hinted at this on Jul 15 when I tweeted about a quote I saw in darkreading.

argh! no, no, no. GIGO… security researcher claims “the more data that you throw at [data security], the better”.

After a brief discussion with that researcher, @alexcpsec, he suggested instead of calling it a “Twinkies flaw” (my first reaction) we could call it the Hostess Principle. Great idea! I updated it to the Evil Hostess Principle — the more bad ingredients you throw at your stomach, the worse. You are prone to “bad failure” if you don’t watch what you eat.

I said “bad failure” because failure is not always bad. It is vital to understand the difference between a plain “more” approach versus a “healthy” approach to ingestion. Most “secrets of success” stories mention that reaction speed to failure is what differentiates winners from losers. That means our failures can actually have very positive results.

Professional athletes, for example are said to be the quickest at recovery. They learn and react far faster to failure than average. This Honda video interviews people about failure and they say things like: “I like to see the improvement and with racing it is very obvious…you can fail 100 times if you can succeed 1”

So (a) it is important to know the acceptable measure of failure. How much bad data are we able to ingest before we aren’t learning anymore — when do we stop floating? Why is 100:1 the right number?

And (b) an important consideration is how we define “improvement” versus just change. Adding ever more bad data (more weight), as we try to go faster and be lighter, could just be a recipe for disaster.

Given these two, #HeavyD is a presentation meant to explain and explore the many ways attackers are able to defeat highly-scalable systems that were designed to improve. It is a technical look at how we might setup positive failure paths (fail-safe countermeasures) if we intend to dig meaning out of data with untrusted origin.

Who do you trust?

Fast analysis of data could be hampered by slow processes to prepare the data. Using bad data could render analysis useless. Projects I’ve seen lately have added weeks to get source material ready for ingestion; decrease duplication, increase completeness and work towards some ground rule of accurate and present value. Already I’m seeing entire practices and consulting built around data normalization and cleaning.

Not only is this a losing proposition (e.g. we learned this already with SIEM), the very definition of big data makes this type of cleaning effort a curious goal. Access to unbounded volumes with unknown variety at increasing velocity…do you want to budget to “clean” it? Big data and the promise of ingesting raw source material seems antithetical to someone charging for complicated ground-rule routines and large cleaning projects.

So we are searching for a new approach. Better risk management perhaps should be based on finding a measure of data linked to improvement, like Newtons required for a life-jacket or healthy ingredients required from Hostess.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Energy, History, Sailing, Security

Sailing Safely after the America’s Cup Death

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I would like to write about the America’s Cup as I have not yet found a good source of information on recent events.

I am by no means an insider although I admit I’ve been racing high-performance catamarans for over a decade that are similar to AC boat designs and I work in risk management.

Perhaps there’s someone out there who can provide a more authoritative perspective, but in the meantime here’s my amateur and unqualified opinion on what recent accidents may mean for sailing in America.

It is too easy to say loss of life is a reality in high-risk events. Likewise it is too easy to say precautions are the obvious answer. The difficult question is whether the America’s Cup authority, known for bias and gerrymandering for self-serving victories, should be trusted with assessment and decision on risk.

Are multi-hulls dangerous?

For as long as I can remember sailors in the Bay have discussed that multi-hulls capsize ungracefully and permanently. Trimarans and Catamarans were banned in some of the large coastal races I’ve done (Monterey Bay) specifically because event sponsors and support wanted to minimize risk. Believe me, I would have sailed a multi-hull if the option were allowed; we would have cut our race time in half and less time on the water is arguably more safe. Subsequently, over the past three years at least, there has been discussion of whether someone will die when a 72ft carbon platform flips over.

Don’t get too worked up about multi-hulls, however. Speed is an essential ingredient in survival (boats can run from danger) and amateurs on multis in heavy weather have proven they can fare better than monohulls. We also have to admit boats with one hull are statistically more deadly. There are many, many years of data on monohulls involved in tragic and fatal accidents; not least of all was the recent and local Farrallones Tragedy.

Mining the data on events like the 1979 Fastnet disaster (15 deaths, 69 monohulls retired) and the 1998 Sydney-Hobart disaster (5 boats sank, 66 boats retired from the race, 6 sailors died, and 55 sailors were taken off their yachts, most by helicopter) has taught us a lot about risk.

One lesson is that chances of survival in difficult weather are significantly higher for boats over 35 feet long. This is related to the engineering. Larger boats are typically made to handle off-shore conditions and more continuous use than day-sailors.

If we dig a little deeper into lesson one, we find lesson two: pushing boats into heavy weather conditions creates unfair or at least unintended competition. Survival conditions impose a completely new set of criteria for success. Sailors of any experience know this well. I can think of at least a dozen hair-raising experiences I have had on boats and even some near-death moments. Here are a few relevant examples:

In 2003 a storm blew through Louisiana that decimated the A-Class Catamaran North American Championships. It was my first major race on a new boat and suddenly I found myself sitting among the top ten competitors in America. Why? I had grown up sailing so it was natural for me to drop into survival mode — get my boat across the line and to shore in one piece. It was sad for me to watch far better sailors, even Olympic medalists, crash and burn. They pushed on with their prior competition as I pulled back, sailing through an asteroid field of broken boats. Only 11 of us finished among more than 40 boats. It was a victory I didn’t want.

Similarly, I found myself crossing the finish line in 17th place at the 2005 A-Class Catamaran World Championships after the wind disappeared. Nearly 100 boats drifted. Again I switched into survival mode, pegged a line of breeze and swooped to a bitter-sweet victory over sailors usually far better than me. Although very exciting to be just seconds from top 15 in the world, it still was not a wanted victory.

First Place at SCYC
Me sailing an International A-Class Catamaran in light wind

I have many more examples but in 2012 I took a different role. I rode a rescue jet ski at the A-Class Catamaran North American Championships. I could barely operate the jet ski the sea state was so rough. Within just a few hours I had I rescued one of the best sailors in the world, who had become separated from his boat, as well as towed four capsized, dismasted and exhausted top-tier international competitors to shore. From this experience I wrote a detailed explanation on how to use tow lines and a power-boat to carefully rescue turtled (upside-down) high-performance catamarans.

Perhaps you can see why I want to articulate my thoughts on what is happening after the Artemis catamaran disaster. I’ve been thinking about multihull risk management for a long time.

Why does baseball stop when it rains?

Sailing has weather guidelines. Don’t sail when it’s too windy, don’t sail when it’s not windy. It should be as simple as canceling a tennis match or a baseball game. Instead it’s a complicated debate about who can “handle” risky conditions.

People talk about the Artemis accident in terms of boat sea-worthiness yet that’s not the correct focus of inquiry.

Here’s what I believe to be the real story on the America’s Cup accident. Team Artemis made a critical risk calculation error early in their campaign related to structural design. The boat was compromised when they tried to work around the rules. This led to an eventual critical failure and death.

What was the error? AC rules specify a limited number of days sailing on the water for the first 72 foot platform. This could in theory reduce research and design costs. Instead it created control evasion as teams wanted to source design data.

To get around the “sailing” rule Artemis put their AC72 “big red” on the water without a wing attached. They set out to accumulate data on hulls. Although this avoided using up precious days “on water” it required a different power source. Powerboats were attached by line to pull the platform at speed.

Preparation and study of load is where things went awry; the design of the boat was for wing strain, not arbitrary tow lines. As some might have expected the introduction of intense power loads damaged big red’s structure — the main beam that was designed to sit beneath a wing was cracked. The ultimate failure of “big red” on its last day on the water was related to the main beam failing…again.

Thus I think the Artemis accident should be seen as an unfortunate design failure, but not directly related to sailing. It was a failure to anticipate tow line strain coupled with continuing to sail on a damaged structure. It had nothing to do with abilities of any sailor on board (unlike the Oracle capsize, which was the result of pilot error during extremely difficult weather).

In fact it is easy to see how a wing, due to stiffness and subsequent efficiencies, actually puts less load on the structure than the cloth sails we used to use. So I hope people see why it is important to see that beam damage from being under tow should not be misrepresented as wing load risk or even foiling risk.

If we want to avoid a structural failure risk in future we must consider the Artemis disaster in terms of load edge-cases. Whether it is a tow line or a force 10 gale, applying unanticipated amounts of stress on untested structure is a recipe for surprise. You could say the same for airplanes or any structure. A massive storm, a line tied to the end of a wing…these are dangers to face outside normal operating conditions.

Tragedy and leverage

This leads me to the most controversial aspect of what has happened since the incident. There is a conflict of interest with a competition authority that is paid by the defending competitor. When they rule on design changes we have to ask if they are making decisions based on competitive advantage.

Plus we know that Oracle has been playing catch-up with their design. Their boat clearly was not designed to foil above the water. That is my guess why every time you see Oracle 17 in pictures they’re flying a hull, yet the other AC boats are flying level. If you’re foiling you don’t need to sail at any angle, right? You already have your hulls out of the water.

Oracle Hulls Unbalanced
Oracle Hulls Unbalanced

ETNZ Hulls Balanced
ETNZ Hulls Balanced

This is not to say the Oracle design team is entirely off target. I see some design innovation advantages (i.e. the giant pod beneath the mast assists with flow, effectively extending the force of the wing). The fact remains, however, that a defender playing catch-up to challengers is going to be under pressure to eliminate the gaps. Oracle already has demonstrated they are not above cheating to catch up.

It appears to me at first look that findings, supposedly related to safety, are aimed at eliminating challenger technology that Oracle sees as a threat to their victory. Safety is in danger of being used as an excuse to help the defender win instead of directly addressing real risks.

If Oracle plays a corruption card to win they deserve not only to lose the cup, they should be ashamed for doing exactly what they promised would end with their leadership. The cup has been steeped in a history of cheating and spying for advantage. Using the Artemis tragedy and safety for competitive leverage will take us to a new low.

The burden therefore is upon the defender and their race authority to transparently and clearly explain any required changes in terms of real risk. This is a critical moment of big data analysis of risk for Oracle; it can help or seriously hurt American sailing. I hope they use it wisely.