Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince' • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by sillysaurusx » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:27 AM UTC

vunie wrote: post #161

tptacek wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trevor Perrin and Moxie Marlinspike won the Levchin Prize at Real World Crypto for Signal's cryptography; the Levchin Prize referees are a who's who of academic cryptography, including Dan Boneh, Kenny Paterson, and Nigel Smart; other Levchin winners have included Hugo Krawczyk, Mihir Bellare, and Joan Daemon. Any suggestion that Telegram's cryptography is somehow comparable owing to "half of them Ph.D's in math", or…

Has there been any weakness found in Telegram's encryption?

https://web.archive.org/web/20150109203032/https://moxie.org... comes to mind. Ancient history now, but it's a fun read.

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

#172

Post by therealdrag0 » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

henryw wrote: post #4

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

This sort of thing blows my mind.

Any rough theories on how this sort of thing can happen? How can an app go from parsing metadata to executing foreign code?

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

#173

Post by ShorsHammer » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC

meowface wrote: post #167

bredren wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty brazen? Don't forget that the WP reported that US intelligence intercepted comms from Saudi officials discussing a plan ordered by MBS to lure Jamal Khashoggi from his home in Virginia and then subsequently had him cut into pieces in an embassy. Hacking a phone is small potatoes.

Yeah, I was using semi-facetious understatement. He's very brazen for someone in his position.

Thankfully he is loved by the West and is untouchable, goes a long way when you are a maniacally evil despot with a penchant for torture.

Who are the bad guys again? Didn't watch the tele today, they usually tell me.

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

#174

Post by nl » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:43 AM UTC

resters wrote: post #112

aodin wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the data center breaches exposed by the Snowden leaks? Because Google claimed that they were unaware of the breach and quickly took action to correct it [1]. Are you suggesting that Google was complicit? [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/meet-muscular-nsa-accused-of-t...

I don't think Google has given us any reason to believe that it was not complicit. For instance, why not include warrant canaries on gmail accounts? There is not really any fundamental difference between abetting the data center breach and opting not to offer warrant canaries. Likely tens of thousands of Google users are searched every day due to easy FISC warrants and wide investigative nets. The state sponsored att…

There were a bunch of Google engineers who worked through Christmas that year who sure we're pretty pissed off about the unexpected work and were furious at the NSA.

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

#175

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:47 AM UTC

iudqnolq wrote: post #114

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

Pavel Durov also said > The encryption of Signal (=WhatsApp, FB) was funded by the US Government. I predict a backdoor will be found there within 5 years from now. He seems to enjoy throwing out loosly supported accusations. He might be right in some of them, but stopped clocks and so forth. He's also been accused himself of deliberately sabotaging the security of his own encrypted messenger app (Telegram). There's n…

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by angry_octet » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:49 AM UTC

Talk about lousy deniability.

I wonder how many Alexas there are in Saudi.

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

#177

Post by dwd » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

executive wrote: post #160

dwd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Join the dots... Who had a beef with Bezos and was friendly with MBS?

Tim Cook, for one.

Ricky Gervais better watch his back then.

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

#178

Post by DrunkOnPower » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:54 AM UTC

davidw wrote: post #82

tw04 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great theory, except for the fact David Pecker was directly involved and more or less admitted it was a favor for Trump which he had been doing for decades.

David Pecker was, IIRC, the guy who also directed the 'catch and kill' with Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trumps-fixers-silenced-sto...

While David Pecker was involved in the brokering of the hush money deal with Stormy Daniels, which Michael Cohen eventually made (and prosecuted for), the "catch and kill" payment was made to Karen McDougal, which was another Trump affair.

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

#179

Post by ineedasername » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:57 AM UTC

Is there any detail on the nature of the exploit? It seems to have been triggered by receipt of a video in WhatsApp. Was the flaw in WhatsApp itself? Or would the exploit have occurred regardless of which messaging/transfer mechanism was used to deliver the video? Has this been fixed? Is it even a documented exploit or is it simply known that it had something to do with the WhatsApp video, but not the actual methodology?

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

#180

Post by PlasticTank » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 3:58 AM UTC

vunie wrote: post #161

tptacek wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trevor Perrin and Moxie Marlinspike won the Levchin Prize at Real World Crypto for Signal's cryptography; the Levchin Prize referees are a who's who of academic cryptography, including Dan Boneh, Kenny Paterson, and Nigel Smart; other Levchin winners have included Hugo Krawczyk, Mihir Bellare, and Joan Daemon. Any suggestion that Telegram's cryptography is somehow comparable owing to "half of them Ph.D's in math", or…

Has there been any weakness found in Telegram's encryption?

I don't know of any directly related to it's encryption but multiple protest organizers were identified and arrested by the Hong Kong Police Force through Telegram, I'm not 100% sure but I believe they just added lists of suspected phone numbers onto their phones and looked in Telegram see which one's matched to Group admins.