A fresh forensic analysis insinuates that data from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone was hacked in 2018 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The phone was reportedly infiltrated via a malicious video file that was able to access Bezos’ phone and much of his data.
According to reports, both Bezos and Salman had chatted via Whatsapp prior to the hack after which an encrypted message sent by Salman’s number most likely contained the malicious video file. It’s not clear what and how much data was taken, nor what the data could have been used for.
The Amazon boss was reportedly targeted largely because of his company, Nash Holdings, and its ownership of the Washington Post, specifically the paper’s aggressive coverage of Saudi Arabia around the time of the hack.
In October 2018, five months after the alleged hack, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated by the Saudi Arabian government. The CIA has since said that Salman ordered Khashoggi’s assassination.
Middle East expert Andrew Miller told the Guardian, “He probably believed that if he got something on Bezos, it could shape coverage of Saudi Arabia in the Post. It is clear that the Saudis have no real boundaries or limits in terms of what they are prepared to do in order to protect and advance MBS, whether it is going after the head of one of the largest companies in the world or a dissident who is on their own.”
The Saudi embassy onTwitter denied involvement by Saudi Arabia in the incident, calling the reports “absurd.”
Bezos’ team also disclosed to the Guardian that they discovered “high confidence” that the Saudis were the ones to leak the information that Bezos was having an affair, which landed the tech giant in the headlines for a few months in 2019.
According to the Guardian, the evidence surrounding the hack is credible enough for “investigators to be considering a formal approach to Saudi Arabia to ask for an explanation.”
