Saudi Arabia hacked Jeff Bezos' phone, investigators claim

In January, the National Enquirer published salacious details about the private life of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

A team of investigators hired by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to discover the source of leaks about his private life have claimed that Saudi Arabia hacked his phone to access his personal data.

In a post published on The Daily Beast, Bezos' security consultant Gavin De Becker claimed that his team is confident that "Saudis had access to Bezos' phone", although the investigators didn't find any evidence to link that supposed access with the information that the National Enquirer tabloid had claimed to have.

According to de Becker, the hack was linked to the Washington Post's reporting of Jamal Khashoggi's murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul last year.

In February this year, the Amazon CEO wrote a detailed post on Medium, accusing the National Enquirer and its parent company, AMI, of trying to blackmail him with intimate images and texts that Bezos had sent to Lauren Sanches, with whom Bezos was having an affair.

In January, the National Enquirer published Bezos' text messages to his Sanches.

Following the revelation, Bezos ordered an investigation to find out how his private images had been leaked to the tabloid.

Saudi Arabia attacks people in many ways, obviously, including through their elaborate social media programme

Some reports have speculated that it was Lauren Sanchez's brother, Michael, who provided the images. Other theories surfaced to suggest that an intelligence agency provided the texts and images to the Trump Administration, or that there could be a foreign government agency behind the leak.

The investigation by de Becker and his team found no evidence to suggest a role of Michael Sanchez in the data breach. According to de Becker, the National Enquirer had contacted Sanchez after seeing image and text exchanges between Bezos and Lauren, indicating that the source of the initial information was someone else.

The investigation concluded "with high confidence" that the Saudis gained Bezos' private information after gaining access to his phone, although it was unclear whether the Saudis passed on the information to AMI.

According to de Becker, AMI chairman David Pecker and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman have a "close relationship". So, when the Washington Post (owned by Bezos) started covering Jamal Khasoggi's murder in October last year, Saudi agencies started attack Bezos on social media.

"Saudi Arabia attacks people in many ways, obviously, including through their elaborate social media programme that uses sophisticated technology and paid surrogates to create artificially trending hashtags," de Becker said in his post.

He said the team has informed US federal officials about their findings.

"As has been reported elsewhere, my results have been turned over to federal officials. Since it is now out of my hands, I intend today's writing to be my last public statement on the matter. Further, to respect officials pursuing this case, I won't disclose details from our investigation," he added.

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