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Jeff Bezos
hack: Amazon boss's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'
Exclusive: investigation
suggests Washington Post owner was targeted five months before murder of Jamal
Khashoggi
THE GUARDIAN, Stephanie
Kirchgaessner in Washington
The Amazon billionaire
Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone “hacked” in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp
message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown
prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the Guardian.
The encrypted message
from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have
included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world’s richest
man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis.
This analysis found it
“highly probable” that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an
infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner
of the Washington Post.
The two men had been
having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on 1 May of that year, the
unsolicited file was sent, according to sources who spoke to the Guardian on
the condition of anonymity.
Large amounts of data
were exfiltrated from Bezos’s phone within hours, according to a person
familiar with the matter. The Guardian has no knowledge of what was taken from
the phone or how it was used.
The extraordinary
revelation that the future king of Saudi Arabia may have had a personal
involvement in the targeting of the American founder of Amazon will
send shockwaves from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
It could also undermine
efforts by “MBS” – as the crown prince is known – to lure more western investors to Saudi Arabia, where
he has vowed to economically transform the kingdom even as he has overseen a
crackdown on his critics and rivals.
The disclosure is likely
to raise difficult questions for the kingdom about the circumstances around how
US tabloid the National Enquirer came to publish intimate details about Bezos’s
private life – including text messages – nine months later.
It may also lead to
renewed scrutiny about what the crown prince and his inner circle were doing in
the months prior to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist
who was killed in October 2018 – five months after the alleged “hack” of the
newspaper’s owner.
Saudi Arabia has
previously denied it targeted Bezos’s phone, and has insisted the murder of
Khashoggi was the result of a “rogue operation”. In December, a Saudi
court convicted eight people of involvement in
the murder after a secret trial that was criticised as a sham by human rights experts.
Digital forensic experts
started examining Bezos’s phone following the publication last January by the
National Enquirer of intimate details about his private life.
The story, which included
his involvement in an extramarital relationship, set off a race by his security
team to uncover how the CEO’s private texts were obtained by the supermarket
tabloid, which was owned by American Media Inc (AMI).
While AMI insisted it was tipped off about the
affair by the estranged brother of Bezos’s girlfriend, the investigation by the
billionaire’s own team found with “high confidence” that the Saudis had managed
to “access” Bezos’s phone and had “gained private information” about him.
Bezos’s head of security,
Gavin de Becker, wrote in the Daily Beast last March he
had provided details of his investigation to law enforcement officials, but did
not publicly reveal any information on how the Saudis accessed the phone.
He also described “the
close relationship” the Saudi crown prince had developed with David Pecker, the chief executive of the company that owned the
Enquirer, in the months before the Bezos story was published. De
Becker did not respond to calls and messages from the Guardian.
The Guardian understands
a forensic analysis of Bezos’s phone, and the indications that the “hack” began
within an infected file from the crown prince’s account, has been reviewed by
Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur who investigates extrajudicial
killings. It is understood that it is considered credible enough for
investigators to be considering a formal approach to Saudi Arabia to ask for an
explanation.
Callamard, whose own investigation into the murder of Khashoggi found
“credible evidence” the crown prince and other senior Saudi officials were
responsible for the killing, confirmed to the Guardian she was still pursuing
“several leads” into the murder, but declined to comment on the alleged Bezos
link.
When asked by the
Guardian whether she would challenge Saudi Arabia about the new “hacking”
allegation, Callamard said she followed all UN protocols that require
investigators to alert governments about forthcoming public allegations.
Saudi experts –
dissidents and analysts – told the Guardian they believed Bezos was probably
targeted because of his ownership of the Post and its coverage of Saudi Arabia.
Khashoggi’s critical columns about Mohammed bin Salman and
his campaign of repression against activists and intellectuals rankled the
crown prince and his inner circle.
Andrew
Miller, a Middle East expert who served on the national security
council under President Obama, said if Bezos had been targeted by the crown
prince, it reflected the “personality-based” environment in which the crown
prince operates.
“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 possibility that the
head of one of America’s leading companies was targeted by Saudi Arabia could
pose a dilemma for the White House.
Trump and his son-in-law
Jared Kushner have maintained close ties with the crown prince despite a US
intelligence finding – reportedly with a medium–to–high degree of certainty –
that Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s murder.
Both Saudi Arabia and AMI
have denied that the kingdom was involved in
the publication of the Bezos story.
A lawyer for Bezos who
was contacted by the Guardian said: “I have no comment on this except to say
that Mr Bezos is cooperating with investigations.”
The Guardian asked the
Saudi embassy in Washington about the claims. It did not immediately return a
request for comment but later said on Twitter that suggestions Saudi Arabia was
responsible for the hack were “absurd”.
Link originale: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/21/amazon-boss-jeff-bezoss-phone-hacked-by-saudi-crown-prince
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