Saudi Kingdom has rejected its role in the hacking incident that targeted Amazon boss CEO and World’s richest man Jeff Bezos.
A message from Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s phone is said to be the source of malicious data that infected the Bezos device. Saudi embassy in US termed the accusations absurd in the response and called for an investigation into the false claims. The alleged hack was previously linked to the coldblooded murder of US-based Saudi-Journalist Jamal Khashoggi – an open critic of Saudi Kingdom’s policies particularly Crown Prince and a well-known dissident of the Kingdom – who wrote for Washington Post which in turn is owned by Bezos.
Mr. Bezos phone got hacked after receiving a WhatsApp message by MBS in May 2018, according to a source from Guardian. The video file sent by the Saudi Prince’s personal phone was directly responsible for the data breach as the billionaire’s phone as soon as it received the encrypted file began to share huge amounts of data.
A statement issued by Saudi Embassy in US denied the charges in an outright manner and demanded for the investigation of the allegations levelled against their Premier.
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
Background
The reports surfaced after private info pertaining to Bezos was leaked to American tabloid the National Enquirer. The billionaire accused the National Enquirer of extortion and blackmail after it published the chats between him and his girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez, former Fox television host and presenter. Bezos and his wife MacKenzie had settled the world’s most expensive divorce following much dragged separation between the two. This would not be the first time the Kingdom has been accused of the alleged breach. In March 2019, an investigator (Gavin de Becker) hired by Bezos also suggested that Saudi high ups were behind the cyber crime aimed at World’s Richest Man. The investigator viewed the hack was triggered by the WP’s coverage of Khashoggi’s assassination by Saudi state.
