Saudi Arabia denies hacking Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's phone

Jeff Bezos (left) and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Pic/AFP

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.

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 the hacking of Mr Jeff Bezos' phone are absurd," the Saudi Arabian embassy said on its Twitter account on Tuesday.

Late Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that a United Nations investigation will report on Wednesday that Bezos's cellphone was hacked after he got the WhatsApp message from an account purportedly belonging to Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler.

Soon after the message was sent, a massive amount of data was extracted from Bezos's phone, the Post said investigators concluded. 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 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.

Bezos hired Gavin de Becker & Associates to find out how his intimate text messages and photos made their way into the hands of the National Enquirer, which reported on the Amazon chief's extramarital affair, leading to his divorce. In March 2019, de Becker said he concluded that Saudi Arabian authorities hacked Bezos's phone.

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