Saudis deny Bezos phone hack link
WASHINGTON: The Saudi embassy in Washington has dismissed suggestions the kingdom hacked the phone of Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, as media reports linked the security breach to a Whatsapp message from an account of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also referred to as MBS.
The 2018 intrusion into the device led to the release of intimate images of Amazon founder Bezos, whose Post newspaper employed as a contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist murdered later that same year at Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul.
“Recent media reports that suggest the kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr Jeff Bezos’ phone are absurd,” the Saudi Arabian embassy tweeted. “We call for an investigation on these claims.”
On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that a UN investigation will report on Wednesday that Bezos’s cell phone was hacked after he got the Whatsapp message from an account purportedly belonging to MBS, the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
After the message was sent, a massive amount of data was extracted from Bezos’s phone, the Post said.
The Guardian earlier reported that the encrypted message from the number used by Prince Mohammed is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated Bezos’s phone, according to a digital forensic analysis.
The two men were having a seemingly friendly Whatsapp exchange when the unsolicited file was sent, according to sources cited by The Guardian.