In case you have been living under a rock for the past few weeks and have just gotten out, we’d like to tell you that there’s a speculation that Jeff Bezos’ phone could’ve been hacked, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) might have something to do with it. Many experts and investigators from Bezos’ own company suggest that a video that the crown prince sent to Jeff over WhatsApp could have contained the code that was used to hack into his phone.
Facebook has finally commented over the matter, and seeing how it is the parent company for WhatsApp, it was long overdue. The company’s Vice President Nicola Mendelsohn said that the hack brings to light “potential security weaknesses in smartphone operating systems.”
“One of the things that it highlights is actually some of the potential underlying vulnerabilities that exist on the actual operating systems on phones,” Mendelsohn said in a Bloomberg Television interview. If nothing more, this does look like more of an attempt at clearing away Whatsapp’s name from this entire scandal.
Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked last year, and experts say that the code that was used to hack into it came from a 4.22 MB video that came from one of the WhatsApp accounts being operated by MBS. Shortly after the hack, Enquirer reported Bezos’ extramarital affair. Saudi Arabia’s embassy has called the allegations “absurd” and has asked for an extensive investigation to clear its name.
Gavin de Becker, a security consultant for Jeff cited Bezos-owned Washington Post’s tough coverage of the murder of investigative journalist Khashoggi by the Saudi regime and the relationship between Enquirer(the tabloid that exposed Jeff’s affair) to be the main reason for why Saudi government might have wanted to harm Jeff’s image.
Even the UN has intervened in the matter and asked for an investigation into the hacking that includes the world’s richest person and the prince of one the biggest oil exporting countries in the world.
Mendelsohn, who helps run Facebook’s Europe, Middle East and Africa business said that the company takes these allegations very seriously and will look into it, but has refrained from talking about “any individual story.”
