Washington – Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’s phone was likely infected by spywarehidden in a message from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, accordingto an analysis released Wednesday, prompting calls for an officialinvestigation.
A forensic analysis by technical experts retained by Bezos after a leak ofhis personal information in early 2019 suggested that the Bezos iPhone wascompromised by “tools” procured by a close associate of the Saudi de factoruler.
The suggestion of the Saudi prince’s role in the hacking prompted calls forfurther investigation by UN human rights officials looking into the October2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and contributor to TheWashington Post, which is owned by Bezos.
“The alleged hacking of Mr Bezos’s phone, and those of others, demandsimmediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities,” UN SpecialRapporteurs Agnes Callamard and David Kaye said in a statement in Geneva.
Any investigation should also look at the “continuous, multi-year, directand personal involvement of the Crown Prince in efforts to target perceivedopponents,” they added.
Callamard, the UN expert on summary executions and extrajudicial killings,and Kaye, the expert on freedom of expression, said the latest revelation”suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince in surveillance ofMr Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post’sreporting on Saudi Arabia.”
The technical experts hired by Bezos concluded “with medium to highconfidence that Bezos’ iPhone was compromised via malware sent from aWhatsApp account used by Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman,” said thereport by FTI Consulting, first reported by the online news site Vice.
– Saudis call allegation ‘absurd’ –
Saudi authorities rejected the latest allegations.
“Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of MrJeff Bezos’ phone are absurd,” the Saudi Arabian embassy said on itsTwitter account.
But FTI, which was retained by the security consultant hired by Bezos,Gavin de Becker, said its forensic analysis pointed to former Saudi courtmedia adviser Saud al-Qahtani, part of Prince Mohammed’s inner circle.
Qahtani, who was sacked as a result of the internal Saudi investigationinto the Khashoggi case, is widely believed to have played a role in thekilling of the journalist and to have directed “a massive online campaign”against Bezos and his newspaper.
The FTI report said Bezos and the Saudi royal exchanged phone numbers andcommunicated via WhatsApp after meeting at a Los Angeles dinner in April2018.
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It said that a message to Bezos on May 1, 2018 contained a video attachmentwhich the two men had not discussed, but which delivered the malware thatallowed “unauthorized exfiltration” of data from the Amazon CEO’s iPhone X.
The outflow of data increased by 29,000 percent after that incident,according to the report.
– A failed blackmail effort –
Bezos, the world’s richest man, announced in early 2019 he was the targetof a blackmail campaign by the National Enquirer tabloid which threatenedto publish lurid pictures of him and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez as hewas moving toward divorcing his wife.
In March last year, de Becker said he concluded that the hack and leak ofthe Bezos pictures were led by Saudi Arabia but did not specify which partof the Saudi government he was blaming for the hack.
According to a message to Bezos in February 2019 cited in the FTI report,the Crown Prince denied any involvement in the hack.
“Jeff all of what you hear or told.. it’s not true,” the message said. “Youknow the truth, there is nothing against you or amazon from me or SaudiArabia.”
The analysis also suggested that the hackers may have used a type ofspyware used in other Saudi surveillance cases, such as Pegasus-3 malwaredeveloped by the Israeli security firm NSO Group.
The Israeli firm said in a statement it was “shocked and appalled” by thereports linking its software to the Bezos phone hacking.
“If this story is true, then it deserves a full investigation by all bodiesproviding such services to assure that their systems have not been used inthis abuse,” the company said.
“Just as we stated when these stories first surfaced months ago, we can sayunequivocally that our technology was not used in this instance.” -APP/AFP
