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Saudi Arabia's Government Allegedly Hacked Into Jeff Bezos's Phone

posted by martyb on Monday April 01 2019, @02:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the pictures-or-it-didn't-happen...oh-wait. dept.

takyon writes:

Saudis gained access to Amazon CEO Bezos' phone: Bezos' security chief

The security chief for Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos said on Saturday that the Saudi government had access to Bezos' phone and gained private information from it.

Gavin De Becker, a longtime security consultant, said he had concluded his investigation into the publication in January of leaked text messages between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, a former television anchor who the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper [had] said Bezos was dating.

Last month, Bezos accused the newspaper's owner of trying to blackmail him with the threat of publishing "intimate photos" he allegedly sent to Sanchez unless he said in public that the tabloid's reporting on him was not politically motivated.

Also at The Daily Beast.

Previously: Jeff Bezos Accuses National Enquirer of Blackmail
The Story Behind the Instant Classic “Bezos Exposes Pecker” Headline

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday April 01 2019, @06:14AM (3 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 01 2019, @06:14AM (#822985) Journal

    Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian theocratic monarchy, who may object to some of the shit Bezos sells on his website, but no obvious motive to send their secret agents after him.

    Same not obvious motives for the case of the... ummm... hospitality offered to Jamal Khashoggi at their Turkish consulate.
    And, if you remember, WaPo pushed that quite hard. Hard enough to be the reason for the hunt: as a theocratic authoritarian, you don't maintain authority for long if there are voices challenging you.

    Saudi Arabia is currently allied with Israel, and the two have an inside track to the US administration.

    But doesn't stop SA internal propaganda tweeting “We as Saudis will never accept to be attacked by The Washington Post in the morning, only to buy products from Amazon and Souq.com by night! Strange that all three companies are owned by the same Jew [sic] who attacks us by day, and sells us products by night!”

    The strongest path here seems to be Bezos > Trump > Israel > Saudi Arabia. Did Israel hack Bezos' phone and give the data to the National Enquirer, to take some of the wind out of his assailing of Trump, and had Saudi Arabia agree to assume the blame? And did Trump then give the Golan Heights to Israel in gratitude?

    You forgot Khashoggi from the picture.

    Enquiring minds want to know. :)

    here they are [thedailybeast.com]. A... ummm... lengthy skimming (from an even lengthier FA, with heaps of corroborating links - believe them or not, the story sounds plausible)

    How the Saudis Made Jeff Bezos Public Enemy No. 1
    ...
    • Oct. 1: Digital security experts at Citizen Lab confirm the phone of Omar Abdulaziz, a Canada-based Saudi dissident who maintained close and daily contact with Jamal Khashoggi, was targeted using state-of-the-art cyberspying software. It is later revealed that digital communications between Abdulaziz and Khashoggi were being intercepted for several months ahead of this point.
    • Oct. 2: Jamal Khashoggi is last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Soon, The Washington Post raises the alarm and demands answers from the Saudi government.
    • Oct. 7: Turkey asserts that Khashoggi has been killed inside the Saudi consulate. The Post escalates its relentless coverage, demanding justice for Jamal.
    • Oct. 15: A hashtag linking Jeff Bezos to the Post’s reporting appears on Saudi social media: “Boycott Amazon.” The first tweet with the hashtag proclaims: “To the people of the Great Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: The leftist Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post, the newspaper of evil and betrayal… we have to defend our country and boycott Amazon.”
    • ...
    • Nov. 4: Several news outlets notice the calls to boycott Amazon on Saudi social media [bloomberg.com] —and at least one points to clear signs of manipulation [washingtonpost.com].
    • Nov. 5: The Washington Post publishes an op-ed titled “It’s time to halt business in Saudi Arabia.”
    • ...
    • Nov. 9: The Washington Post publishes an op-ed by Mohammad Ali al-Houthi, a leader of the Houthis, the rebel group the Saudi-led coalition has been fighting in Yemen since 2015
    • Nov. 10 - Nov. 19: Large and sustained spike in anti-Bezos tweets as three more hashtags are launched, including: “The owner of Amazon and Souq is attacking us” and “Bezos threatens us while Souq.com trades with us.” [links in original to tweets in arabic]
      This time the surge includes graphics, cartoons, and videos disparaging Bezos.
      ...
      Another graphic, captioned “The Jew: Jeff Bezos,” links Bezos to The Washington Post, Amazon, and Souq.com (Note: Though Jeff Bezos isn’t Jewish, claiming public figures are Jewish in order to tie them to all sorts of nefarious activities is a well-known anti-Semitic trope.)
    • ...

    Anti-Bezos hashtags die down for a while after this point, until on Jan. 10 the National Enquirer publishes its special issue dedicated to revealing Bezos’ affair. MBS surrogates immediately engage in schadenfreude:

    “Jeff Bezos has incited against Saudi Arabia and its leadership for weeks via his Washington Post, and now has been struck by a marital infidelity scandal that will cost him half his fortune in the divorce. In brief—whoever earns Saudi Arabia’s enmity will be broken, disparaged, and ended by God.”
    ...

    On our website, we have been looking into what is known about AMI’s [AMI [wikipedia.org] is the owner of The Enquirere] connection to the Saudis, and I’ll share just a few quick examples here. First, some context: Ahead of these events, David Pecker’s company was $1.3 billion in debt, and losing more than $70 million per year. Since all these events, its finances have sharply and mysteriously improved.

    1. ...
    2. Jan. 9: AMI announces that it has “successfully completed the refinancing of all outstanding debt.” Although the company was emphatic that no foreign investors were directly involved, AMI refused to name its white knights. It has not ruled out that the Saudis may have invested indirectly, as you’ll see below.
    3. ...
    4. Jan. 11: Bezos directs his security adviser Gavin de Becker to undertake an investigation to determine who provided his private texts to the Enquirer, and why. Bezos gave de Becker “whatever budget is needed to pursue the facts.”
    5. Jan. 31: De Becker tells The Daily Beast that “strong leads point to political motives.”

      ...
      Finding that it couldn’t easily stop De Becker’s well-funded investigation, AMI began the strong-arm attempt that Bezos would soon publicly reveal. Its most senior content officer, Dylan Howard, sent Bezos’ attorney a salacious tabloid-style itemization of 10 intimate photos in its possession.

      “It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail—and quickly.”

      (Very early in the morning that same day, the Saudi government’s anti-Bezos hashtags that had been dormant for weeks suddenly show a strong spike of clearly manipulated activity.)

      Bezos and De Becker both refused the Enquirer’s offer, Bezos rather famously.

      Whatever AMI wanted from De Becker, it must have been worth the Enquirer giving up photos that might well have created its biggest-selling issue. Here is the actual statement it wanted De Becker to make in a public news release:

      “We do not believe and have no basis for suggesting that the reporting undertaken by American Media and The National Enquirer was instigated, influenced, motivated, or dictated in any manner by external political forces, nor do we believe they utilized any form of electronic eavesdropping or hacking…”

      ...
      Weeks ago, David Pecker’s CFO told reporters at Bloomberg News that AMI has again been saved, this time by “several new investors that came into the fold.” Though he would not name the investors, he added:

      “There is no direct investment in the company’s debt or equity by the Saudis.”

      Rarely has the word “direct” caused a statement to be so indirect.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Interesting=2, Informative=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   5  

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 01 2019, @06:37AM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Monday April 01 2019, @06:37AM (#822988) Journal

    Oct. 2: Jamal Khashoggi is last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Soon, The Washington Post raises the alarm and demands answers from the Saudi government.
    Oct. 7: Turkey asserts that Khashoggi has been killed inside the Saudi consulate. The Post escalates its relentless coverage, demanding justice for Jamal.

    If it had been someone else that the WaPost hadn't been involved with, maybe it would have been completely swept under the rug or gone unnoticed for days or weeks. Instead, it became the top news story globally (IIRC).

    The nature of the Khashoggi murder makes it seem even more likely that Saudis would go after Bezos. Mr. Bone Saw is developing a reputation for ordering brazen actions for petty reasons. I can't imagine that hacking Bezos and leaking his affair in order to embarrass him would be worth much strategically in comparison to the backlash. I wonder if NEOM [soylentnews.org] and all those other big plans will see the light of day in Saudi Pariah.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 01 2019, @07:27AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 01 2019, @07:27AM (#822990) Journal

      I can't imagine that hacking Bezos and leaking his affair in order to embarrass him would be worth much strategically in comparison to the backlash

      I feel that Mr Bone Saw suffers from an imagination deficit.
      Specifically, he cannot imagine he could fail or be discovered. That, I reckon, is a common syndrome in young males, particularly in sociopathic autocrats that had a sheltered upbringing.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 01 2019, @07:43AM

        by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Monday April 01 2019, @07:43AM (#822995) Journal

        An eight-page contract AMI sent for me and Bezos to sign would have required that I make a public statement, composed by them and then widely disseminated, saying that my investigation had concluded they hadn’t relied upon “any form of electronic eavesdropping or hacking in their news-gathering process.”

        Note here that I’d never publicly said anything about electronic eavesdropping or hacking—and they wanted to be sure I couldn’t.

        They also wanted me to say our investigation had concluded that their Bezos story was not “instigated, dictated or influenced in any manner by external forces, political or otherwise.” External forces? Such a strange phrase.

        MBS also couldn't imagine that there would be idiocy at an American tabloid publication.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]