Jeff Bezos phone hack shows link to Saudi prince
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince has been accused of leaking explicit photos of the world’s richest man after hacking his phone.
The phone of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was hacked after receiving a file sent from an account used by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, United Nations experts say.
The two experts called for an “immediate investigation” by the United States into information that suggests that Mr Bezos’ phone was likely hacked after he received an MP4 video file sent from the Saudi prince’s WhatsApp account in May 2018, after the two exchanged phone numbers at a dinner in California.
The billionaire’s phone was likely infected by spyware, hidden in a message from the Prince.
A forensic analysis by technical experts retained by Bezos after a leak of his personal information suggested that his iPhone was compromised by “tools” procured by a close associate of the Saudi de facto ruler.
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The suggestion of the prince’s role in the hacking prompted calls for further investigation by UN human rights officials looking into the October 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a contributor to the Bezos-owned Washington Post.
The file in question was sent to Mr Bezos’ phone five months before Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey.
At the time, the crown prince was being widely hailed for ushering in major social reforms to the kingdom, but Khashoggi was writing columns in the Post that highlighted the darker side of the crown prince’s simultaneous clampdown on dissent.
The Post was harshly critical of the Saudi government after Khashoggi’s killing and demanded accountability in a highly public campaign that ran in the paper for weeks after his death.
“The information we have received suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince in surveillance of Mr Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post’s reporting on Saudi Arabia,” UN special rapporteurs Agnes Callamard and David Kaye said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The alleged hacking of Mr Bezos’s phone, and those of others, demand immediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities.”
The experts said that at a time when Saudi Arabia was “supposedly investigating the killing of Mr Khashoggi, and prosecuting those it deemed responsible, it was clandestinely waging a massive online campaign against Mr Bezos and Amazon targeting him principally as the owner of The Washington Post.”
Callamard and Kaye published their statement after reviewing a full report conducted by a team of investigators, hired by Bezos.
The digital forensic investigation that was commissioned by Bezos and shared with the UN experts assessed with “medium to high confidence” that his phone was infiltrated on May 1, 2018, via the MP4 video file sent from the crown prince’s WhatsApp account.
The experts said that records showed that within hours of receiving the video from the crown prince’s account, there was “an anomalous and extreme change in phone behaviour”.
The initial report said the device began leaking massive amounts of data about a month afterwards.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, called the hacking allegations “absolutely illegitimate”.
“There was no information in there that’s relevant. There was no substantiation, there was no evidence,” he told an AP reporter.
“It was purely conjecture, and if there is real evidence, we look forward to seeing it.”
Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos' phone are absurd. We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out.
— Saudi Embassy (@SaudiEmbassyUSA) January 22, 2020
Saudi Arabia’s US embassy also dismissed the allegations.
“We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out,” it said in a message posted on Twitter.
Mr Bezos’ security chief said last year that the Saudi Government had gained access to the Amazon CEO’s phone and leaked messages to US tabloid the National Enquirerbetween Mr Bezos and former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, who the newspaper said he was dating.
Mr Bezos had accused the newspaper’s owner of trying to blackmail him with the threat of publishing “intimate photos” he allegedly sent to Ms Sanchez.
The Saudi Government has denied having anything to do with the National Enquirer reporting.
– With AP
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