Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 327 posts

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

#51

Post by markdown »

p0rkbelly wrote: post #46
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #24

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?

The Saudi Royal Family simply do not care and walk around with impunity. They thumb their nose at the law and the world order and think they deserve to do whatever they want. This is exactly the same as the Khagoshi execution where overwhelming evidence and implication, but, play naive and put on a big sham investigation. Just how when Russian agents poisoned the Skripals and said they were their to view a church ste…

> The Saudi Royal Family simply do not care and walk around with impunity. They thumb their nose at the law and the world order and think they deserve to do whatever they want.

You could be talking about the Trump and you'd still be correct. In fact Trump is worse, he didn't even try to cover up his assassination of Soleimani.

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

#52

Post by nif2ee »

>Jeff Bezos chatting with Mohammed bin Salman on WhatsApp

Not sure whether this is a yet another fake story sponsored by the Qataris, who infiltrated the liberal western media with their isalmist and ultra left minions all over in the name of diversity, since their rift with the Saudis in mid 2017 or the richest man on Earth is actually retarded enough to chat with a head of state like Saudi Arabia on fucking WhatsApp

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

#53

Post by mywittyname »

nopriorarrests wrote: post #26
icandoit wrote: post #21

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?

Very good pay; the ability to work remotely; pride/prestige; community; political reasons.

Being a good digital thief is still very lucrative, especially for people living in low income areas with relatively lax law enforcement. These people can run encrypted computer extortions, steal bitcoin wallets, run/sell botnets, fence digital goods, run underground ad networks, and consult.

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

#54

Post by thaeli »

icandoit wrote: post #21
nopriorarrests wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question. Given that RCE's are extremely rare, can't FB and AAPL announce 100M USD bounty to get them first and patch them, avoiding bad PR and brand impact? Damn, make it 200M?! Or bad actors can easily pay 5x more to exploit said 0 day on a few targets, so hackers will sell to them instead?

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.

Brokers ("grey market") usually pay out over time, for this reason. If a seller double-dipped by also selling the vuln to the vendor via a bounty program, it could get fixed before they actually got most of their grey-market money.

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

#56

Post by kshacker »

Whatsapp allows desktop clients. I use it too. It is technically possible for someone to hijack this desktop client and do this without MBS's involvement, as long as MBS authorized that desktop. I think you need proximity, but you can have a computer near the prince, and that computer being remotely controlled by someone sitting far away.

Not saying this happened ... but there are many ways to blame it on prince and many ways to defend him (and blame a subordinate).

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

#57

Post by lawnchair_larry »

ceejayoz wrote: post #44
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there reason to believe Bezos regularly corresponds on WhatsApp with other Saudis?

Why would it have to come from another Saudi?

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

#59

Post by victords »

jessaustin wrote: post #23
saberience wrote: post #2

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?

By that logic, nobody should care about the Khashoggi killing as well.
Post reply on HN