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

theguardian.com

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

#91

Post by eljimmy »

rmsaksida wrote: post #62

Pavel Durov argued that WhatsApp's vulnerabilities are intentionally created as part of surveillance programs with government agencies. [1] If that were true, Bezos's case would be an example of how that approach to security is double-edged. Backdoors can be just as useful to foreign intelligence as they are to whoever pushed for their implementation. [1] https://t.me/s/durov/109

That's one hell of a tinfoil-hat theory. How would you even orchestrate that from within a public company with so many developers involved?

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

#92

Post by kryogen1c »

davidw wrote: post #67
sonotathrowaway wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

All the facts above are correct. The opinion at the end seems pretty reasonable given things like this: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/14/17233680/trump-amazon-bez...

[flagged]

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

#93

Post by resters »

eljimmy wrote: post #91
rmsaksida wrote: post #62

Pavel Durov argued that WhatsApp's vulnerabilities are intentionally created as part of surveillance programs with government agencies. [1] If that were true, Bezos's case would be an example of how that approach to security is double-edged. Backdoors can be just as useful to foreign intelligence as they are to whoever pushed for their implementation. [1] https://t.me/s/durov/109

That's one hell of a tinfoil-hat theory. How would you even orchestrate that from within a public company with so many developers involved?

Considering how few developers understand the subtleties of security, it would not be all that difficult.

Also, FWIW we know that Google did this with its data center breach and likely many other cases.

At WhatsApp/Google scale the attack is extremely cost effective.

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

#95

Post by ceejayoz »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #57
ceejayoz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would it have to come from another Saudi?

It has to come from an account a) Bezos trusts enough to read and open attachments from, b) an account Saudi intel has access to, and c) an account that's not gonna go "hey ignore that, I got hacked".

That’s likely to be a small set.

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

#96

Post by OrgNet »

clubm8 wrote: post #15

I wonder how often less high profile folks get hit with stuff like this? On one hand, zero days are rare and expensive. OTOH someone who isn't the CEO of a major company might not notice the malware, or if they do, not know they should forward it to an organization like Citizen Lab.

> zero days are rare

really?

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

#97

Post by lovich »

kryogen1c wrote: post #92
davidw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the facts above are correct. The opinion at the end seems pretty reasonable given things like this: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/14/17233680/trump-amazon-bez...

[flagged]

lugenpresse means "lying press" and is equivalent to "fake news"

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

#100

Post by Zooper »

goldcd wrote: post #39

My gut response to this is "bullshit" Not based on the Saudi's not buying zero-day-exploits, but on them using them from the crown prince's account directly against Jeff.

Why? Bezos isn't going to open any other videos from someone else. The US executive branch won't do a thing, in case the Saudis decide to stop buying US treasury bonds in exchange for oil. Then they might stop buying weapons, which funds the inflated military industry, and then they might buy weapons from someone else and begin keeping larger reserves of their currency. This exchange is worth more to those in power than Bezos' love life.
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