WhatsApp hacked by Jeff Bezos and accused Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia

A new investigation indicates that the phone of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was hacked through his communication with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman via WhatsApp. In their exchange of letters and files, the Saudi prince sent him a bombed video file that appeared to be harmless, but it allowed the Crown Prince to access all the contents of the device of the richest man in the world. The alleged hack shows that online security is never guaranteed, even in this encrypted messaging app that was acquired by Facebook and this is something to consider even if you are not a billionaire.

The Guardian and the Financial Times both reported that the investigation concluded that the Amazon founder's iPhone According to a copy of the full report, compiled by FTI and obtained by Vice, the video itself cannot be studied due to the app's encryption feature, so it remains unclear whether it contains malware.

However, investigators noted that shortly after the video was sent, abnormally large amounts of data were ejected from the phone (a data leak occurs when a malicious actor transfers data outside the device usually without the owner's knowledge), and this leak continued at a high rate for several months. The video was sent to Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, at the same time that the Saudi government was very concerned about negative coverage of the assassination of Saudi journalist Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Turkey. Suspicions that the Saudi government had hacked Bezos' phone began in February 2019, after the National Enquirer reported that Bezos was having an extramarital affair.

It seems that this report is based on information that could only be obtained through Bezos' phone, where they obtained some sensitive conversations between the businessman and his mistress, and that newspaper threatens to publish more private content that it obtained from its confidential sources. Observers interpreted this as a Saudi threat to the American businessman to stop his newspaper from attacking Saudi Arabia.