Page 10 - ARUBATODAY

A10 WORLD NEWS
Thursday 23 January 2020
Saudi crown prince's WhatsApp linked to Bezos phone hack

DUBAI, United Arab Emir- ministration official, speak-
ates (AP) — The cellphone ing on condition of ano-
of Amazon founder and nymity to discuss internal
Washington Post owner matters, said presidential
Jeff Bezos was hacked in adviser Jared Kushner has
what appeared to be an communicated with the
attempt by Saudi Arabia's Saudi crown prince on
crown prince to "influence, WhatsApp.
if not silence" the newspa- Bezos visited Saudi Arabia
per's reporting on the king- in 2016 to meet with Prince
dom, two U.N. human rights Mohammed before the
experts said Wednesday. two men met again dur-
The U.N. experts called for ing the prince's tour of the
an "immediate investiga- United States in 2018.
tion" by the United States The billionaire had been
into a report commissioned looking for a site in the
by Bezos that showed Middle East to expand
the billionaire technology Amazon's cloud services.
mogul's phone was likely The company ultimately
hacked after he received selected the island nation
an MP4 video file sent from of Bahrain off the coast of
Crown Prince Mohammed In this Oct. 14, 2019 file photo, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaks to Saudi Arabia.
bin Salman's WhatsApp ac- Russian President Vladimir Putin during the talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. During that time, Amazon
count after the two men Associated Press had already expanded into
exchanged phone num- the Middle East with its 2017
bers during a dinner in Los ton Post," the experts said. published their statement 24 years in prison in Decem- purchase of e-commerce
Angeles in 2018. Bezos first went public after reviewing the report ber for Khashoggi's slaying. website Souq.com, which is
The video file was sent to about the hack last year. conducted by FTI Consult- Al-Qahtani was also head a competitor of Noon.com,
Bezos' phone five months He said the National Enquir- ing, which was hired by of Saudi Arabia's cyberse- a platform launched that
before Saudi critic and er tabloid, whose owner Bezos' security adviser to curity federation and al- same year and is heavily
Washington Post colum- has ties to the crown prince, manage the investigation. legedly behind campaigns funded by Saudi Arabia's
nist Jamal Khashoggi was was threatening to publish The report was published that created artificially- Public Investment Fund,
killed by Saudi government Bezos' private messages in full exclusively by VICE's trending tweets to attack which is overseen by the
agents inside the Saudi and photos if he didn't stop Motherboard later on the prince's perceived en- crown prince.
consulate in Turkey in Octo- a private investigation he'd Wednesday. emies, rally support around Bezos went public last Feb-
ber. At the time, the crown sought into the hacking of The digital forensic investi- the leadership and stymie ruary after allegedly be-
prince was being widely his phone. gation assessed with "me- criticism on social media. ing shaken down by the
hailed for ushering in major Iyad el-Baghdadi, an activ- dium to high confidence" The full investigative report, National Enquirer, which
social reforms to the king- ist who worked with Bezos' that Bezos' phone was infil- reviewed by The Associ- he said threatened to ex-
dom, but Khashoggi was investigators, told The As- trated on May 1, 2018, via ated Press, found that due pose a "below-the-belt"
writing columns in the Post sociated Press it appears the video file sent from the to end-to-end encryption, selfie he'd taken and other
that highlighted the darker the hacking was about crown prince's WhatsApp it was virtually impossible to private messages and pic-
side of Prince Mohammed's free speech. "It's not about account. decrypt the contents of the tures he'd exchanged with
simultaneous clampdown trying to compromise a The U.N. experts said that downloader to determine if a woman he was dating
on dissent. businessman for business records showed that within it did indeed have any ma- while he was still married.
The Post was harshly critical purposes," he said. "It's not hours of receiving the video licious code. Bezos wrote in a lengthy
of the Saudi government about Amazon, it's about from Prince Mohammed's Saudi Arabia has already piece for the Medium that
after Khashoggi's killing and The Washington Post." account, there was "an been accused of spying in rather than capitulate to
demanded accountabil- Saudi Arabia's foreign min- anomalous and extreme America in a case involv- extortion and blackmail,
ity in a highly public cam- ister, Prince Faisal bin Far- change in phone behav- ing Twitter. U.S. prosecutors "I've decided to publish
paign that ran in the paper han Al Saud, called the ior" with enormous amounts in California allege that the exactly what they sent
for weeks after his death. hacking allegations "abso- of data being transmitted Saudi government, frustrat- me, despite the personal
"The information we have lutely illegitimate." and exfiltrated from the ed by growing criticism of cost and embarrassment
received suggests the pos- "There was no information in phone, undetected, over its leaders and policies on they threaten. While he
sible involvement of the there that's relevant. There months. social media, recruited two did not accuse Saudi Ara-
Crown Prince in surveillance was no substantiation, The report stated that Twitter employees to gath- bia's crown prince of being
of Mr. Bezos, in an effort to there was no evidence," he Bezos' phone was com- er confidential personal behind the hacking of his
influence, if not silence, The told an AP reporter at the promised "possibly via tools information on thousands phone, he noted that the
Washington Post's reporting World Economic Forum in procured by Saud al-Qa- of accounts that included owner of the National En-
on Saudi Arabia," the inde- Davos, Switzerland. "It was htani," the former adviser prominent opponents. quirer had been investigat-
pendent U.N. experts said. purely conjecture, and if to the crown prince who Adam S. Hickey, deputy as- ed for various actions taken
At a time when Saudi Ara- there is real evidence, we was sanctioned by the U.S. sistant attorney general of on behalf of the Saudi gov-
bia was "supposedly inves- look forward to seeing it." for his suspected role in or- the U.S. Department of Jus- ernment.
tigating the killing of Mr. The independent experts, chestrating the operation tice's National Security Divi- Bezos' chief investigator,
Khashoggi, and prosecut- Agnes Callamard, special that killed Khashoggi. sion, would not confirm or Gavin De Becker, went fur-
ing those it deemed re- rapporteur on summary ex- Saudi Arabia's justice sys- deny a U.S. investigation of ther, saying in a published
sponsible, it was clandes- ecutions and extrajudicial tem found al-Qahtani not the latest allegations was report last March that the
tinely waging a massive killings, and David Kaye, guilty of any wrongdo- underway, but said "we investigation "concluded
online campaign against special rapporteur on free- ing in the killing. A judge investigate nation state- with high confidence that
Mr. Bezos and Amazon tar- dom of expression, were sentenced five people sponsored hacking all the the Saudis had access to
geting him principally as appointed by the U.N. Hu- to death and sentenced time." Bezos' phone, and gained
the owner of The Washing- man Rights Council. They three others to a combined Separately, a Trump ad- private information." q