The news that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent malware to AmazonJeff Bezos, aiming to steal a large amount of data from Bezos' phone, has sparked a backlash in the tech. WhatsApp, the app used to send the malware, and its parent company, Facebook,
Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, was asked about the Bezos hack in a recent interview with the BBC. Although Clegg said he was willing to “shed light on the matter,” he ended up giving a vague and unclear answer. Specifically, Clegg equated the hack with opening a malicious email ,saying that: “It only comes to life when someone opens it.” However, this is not true, since today, in general, a device cannot be hacked just by opening an email. In contrast, hacks transmitted via email often involve clicking on malicious links or downloading attachments. Clegg may have meant that a device can be hacked when a user clicks on a file, but that is not clear from his answer. He also added that “something” may have affected the phone. According to a technical report on the hack, Bezos was using an iPhone X when he received the suspicious video file from the Saudi prince on WhatsApp.
Clegg's involvement in the Bezos hacking case has sparked a storm of reaction from many in the tech community. According to the BBC, cyber researchers discovered two security holes in WhatsApp in 2019 that showed the app wasn't "flawless." In one case, hackers developed malware that was activated when attackers called a person via WhatsApp. Facebook later sued the Israeli group NSO , which is accused of being behind the malware. In another case, hackers found a security flaw that could have allowed them to access the messages of "hacked" people by sending a malicious video . This isn't the first time Facebook has blamed operating systems for a hack. During an interview with Bloomberg, Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said that the Bezos hack highlights one of the flaws in the devices’ operating system. Clegg also said that the Bezos hack was not WhatsApp’s fault, since end-to-end encryption cannot be hacked, and placed the blame on Apple’s operating system.
Apple refused to comment on Facebook's statements. Although Facebook has not specifically named Apple through the comments of Clegg and Mendelsohn, the report that reveals that Bezos is using an iPhone X was published by news agencies before both of them made their remarks.
Experts believe Bezos was targeted by Saudi Arabia because he owns the Washington Post, which published articles critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The writer of those critical articles was Jamal Khashoggi , who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by the Saudi government in 2018.
Saudi Arabia denies the involvement of Mohammed bin Salman in the hacking of Bezos, with whom he had an apparently good relationship, and has called for a thorough investigation into the allegations.
