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No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

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Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#501
For all the times Hacker News criticizes personal "anecdata", nitpicks the tiniest flaw in methodology, and demands statistical significance for every trivial matter, when it comes to politics they sure are willing to run the gossip mill without an ounce of critical thought.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#502
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politically motivated - 100% Government entity accessed them? I'd say it is much more likely that someone got the texts off his mistresses phone (whether willingly or not).

I don't understand, isn't a government entity someone who can get the texts off his mistress' phone?

I think the point is that it doesn't require the power of a government agency to get anybody's images off their phone.

It could be a government, it it could be Bezos' wife, Sanchez's brother or ex husband, or just someone with a knack for social engineering who thought there was a lot of money to be made.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed, however the evidence looks too amateurish for a state-sponsored attack.

Yea, just look at how well thought out the Khashoggi murder was.

Well Kashoggi is dead and MBS got away with it. Moreover, MBS's enemies know know what he's willing to do, and what he can get away with, and may be frightened into compliance. From MBS's perspective this sounds like a success.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#504
post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

More interesting context: both David Pecker and AMI have cooperation deals with Mueller, and have admitted to killing stories about Trump during the election.

Those agreements are now void if they've broken the law.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#505
post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

Why Saudis? Why not the Russians in this context?

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#506
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt that it was done by a US government entity. Trump is the president and all, but to hack and release (by a third party) the personal information if a citizen (not suspected or related to any crime) seems to me to be something that even Trump or his supporters can't do, the intelligence agencies just wouldn't do it in my opinion. The Saudis seem like a much more likely party to do it in my opinion, mostl…

Nuh-huh. What happens is something approximately like this: Saudi military intelligence puts through a request via appropriate channels to the Five Eyes for a tap on some low-profile woman's phone, claiming it's necessary in pursuit of a counter-terrorism objective. This ends up with GCHQ rather than NSA (NSA spies on Brits, Brits spy on Americans, they work at adjacent desks and share info: this is the traditional w…

No no no. The UK has laws that facilitate surveillance of its citizens. The UK spying on US citizens in the USA is something that I would put into a risk category two (more??) orders of magnitude above brexit or suez. I'm sorry, but it would be lunatic recklessness, and to what advantage?

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#507
post #15

Whatever you think about Jeff, this is the correct way to handle such things. We should all have the same character in such a situation (despite how the situation arose; in this case via an affair). Jeff has MANY other issues of moral disfortitude (we all do to some degree, though not at these scales). However, this particular event is to be applauded and emulated.

This sounds too bad to be true , but if true i think it's how any sensible person should handle it. I mean, a dik pik who will care a month later. Did they really think that such misguided extortion would work? It really doesn't make much sense unless someone else was pushing forward this extortion

I'm gonna guess that the National Enquirer knows what the response will be when they say "we'll release your pics". They probably weren't expecting this move by bezos

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#509
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- '

Nobody said they've used sophisticated attacks to get their hands into that data, though. Why would a Government agency risk burning a zero day if they can just pay that lady or blackmail her with something else?

>>> "Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked"

Hacking implies a sophisticated attack.

Not saying either government didn't do it. Following paxys line of thought I would however agree that hacking is not the most likely explanation in how the private data was taken.

Social engineering is sometimes also described as an "hack" but I doubt that is what Bezos implies with the word.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#510
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- '

Nobody said they've used sophisticated attacks to get their hands into that data, though. Why would a Government agency risk burning a zero day if they can just pay that lady or blackmail her with something else?

Or they just wait until she leaves her phone unattended and clone it
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