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Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

theguardian.com

31–40 of 327 posts

Re: Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

#31

This sounded plausible until I read the first sentence. Why would MBS be the one executing the attack, and using his personal account to do it?

It seems unlikely it would be MBS himself pressing the button, but a reason why Saudi intelligence might use his personal account is because Bezos would be far more likely to open a video sent from MBS than from some random account.

Re: Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see bounties offered no questioned asked too. That way someone on the payroll of nefarious inc. my decide to share it with Google or Apple the same time as their boss.

Actually, this is my second question. How much money FB/AAPL are ready to pay for a security researcher who can find 0 day in their software to work full-time for them? Is Nefarius Inc. really competitive with them, salary-wise? I just can't grasp the economics here. Back in 90's, being a bad guy was probably more lucrative, but now, when established IT companies have market cap in trillion zone... what makes people…

> what makes people work for nefarius inc?

No idea about nefarius, but when I talked with someone in a similar role the answer was work conditions. It was apparently easier to get a remote role with a flexible schedule at a more "sketchy" company.

Re: Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

#34
post #12
post #4

I'm glad it's fixed now. https://www.facebook.com/security/advisories/cve-2019-11931

At the time, FB said it didn't believe the bug had been exploited: In this instance there is no reason to believe users were impacted. [0] The alleged hack of Bezos happened in May 2018, about 18 months after the Nov 2019 bug fix. I wonder if FB's statement was just boilerplate PR or if they really did substantial forensics to have "no reason to believe users were impacted". [0] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/…

s/after/before/

Re: Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

#35
post #31

This sounded plausible until I read the first sentence. Why would MBS be the one executing the attack, and using his personal account to do it?

It seems unlikely it would be MBS himself pressing the button, but a reason why Saudi intelligence might use his personal account is because Bezos would be far more likely to open a video sent from MBS than from some random account.

But the obvious thing to do would be to pick anybody else that Jeff would also talk to and send it from their account instead. Only the most incompetent intelligence agency imaginable would do an op and intentionally attribute it to their own head of state.

Re: Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

#36

So MBS or someone in Saudi intelligence is somehow behind the leak of the photos to the National Enquirer, and the subsequent divorce of the Bezos?

The texts were leaked by the brother of the mistress.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mistress-lauren-sanchezs-broth...

Re: Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

#37

So MBS or someone in Saudi intelligence is somehow behind the leak of the photos to the National Enquirer, and the subsequent divorce of the Bezos?

That was what Bezos's camp has been saying from almost the very beginning. The news here isn't the suspected involvement of the Saudis, the news is that MBS is directly implicated.

Re: Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

#38
post #3

> This analysis found it “highly probable” that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post. Any more information on how this type of attack works? Is it a vulnerability in Whatsapp, or was whatsapp just the delivery platform?

https://www.facebook.com/security/advisories/cve-2019-11931

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

#40

Let's assume this is how Bezos's phone was hacked for a second, does anyone think Trump would do anything about it? Sanction Saudia Arabia? Trump didn't lift a finger after the Jamal Khashoggi killing and his son-in-law is deep in various business dealings with MBS and his goons. Hell, Trump is probably happy the Saudis are hacking the phone of his perceived "enemy".

Is this something a President or anyone in government employ should care about? A private citizen using a commercial app on a private phone granted that app some permissions he later regretted. Why should USA taxpayers care about that?

Will Bezos's divorce affect the Amazon empire in any way? Wondering if that personal move will somehow have corporate, technological infrastructural, and thus national security repercussions.
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