This past August, the late British tech millionaire Mike Lynch’s yacht sank during a storm as he celebrated his acquittal from a years-long fraud trial.
Gathering close family and friends, Lynch found his plans thrown asunder as he along with six others died.
At first, Italian authorities thought the 184-foot yacht named the Bayesian would attract potential thieves due to its typical loot—high-end jewelry and other precious items—divers told CNN. But it might also harbor some top-secret data.
Through remotely operated cameras, divers have found watertight safes that they think could hold two super-encrypted hard drives, sources familiar with the probe told CNN. These drives potentially contain passcodes, sensitive data, and other highly classified information.
Divers called for greater security surrounding the wreck as this find could attract interested parties from Russia and China, CNN added.
Survivors of the crash reportedly told prosecutors that Lynch “did not trust cloud services,” and instead made a regular habit of keeping drives of data in his yacht when he set to the water, a source explained to CNN. Authorities for Termini Imerese, whose prosecutors are leading a manslaughter probe, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to CNN, Lynch had ties to Western intelligence agencies through some of his companies, including Darktrace. Lynch was the founding investor of the cybersecurity company that uses AI to protect organizations against potential attacks, and he held a combined 3% stake alongside his wife, Angela Bacarez. Darktrace declined to comment on the hard drives, but told Fortune that Lynch didn’t have any operational involvement with the group since stepping down from the board in 2018.
“Darktrace was founded in 2013 by a group of mathematicians, businesspeople and cybersecurity experts, and we hire from a wide range of backgrounds, including mathematicians, engineers, former civil servants and people from the intelligence services,” a Darktrace spokesperson told Fortune. “It is commonplace for people in the cybersecurity industry to move between the private and public sectors, all in support of a mission to protect organizations from cyber attacks.”
Bacares was also well-connected after advising previous British prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May on matters of science, technology, and cybersecurity, according to CNN’s report.
Darktrace has gone through some changes as well recently, as the company is being bought by Thoma Bravo for $5.3 billion. This month, Darktrace cofounder and CEO Poppy Gustafsson stepped down to be replaced by the company’s COO, Jill Popelka.
While Lynch has been cleared of fraud charges in the U.S., Hewlett-Packard announced this month that it will continue to pursue his family for $4 billion in a civil case in the U.K.
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