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The technical report suggesting Saudi Arabia's prince hacked Bezos' phone

84 points by mudil 7y ago

mzs 7y ago
journalist's thread > NEW: Saudi officials close to MBS tell WSJ they were aware of a plan to hack Bezos' phone, but not of any attempt to blackmail him. Qahtani was involved in the hacking effort as part of a broader intimidation campaign against Khashoggi, officials said. More: FBI is investigating the hack, source says. Bezos didn’t want to provide his phone directly to the FBI, so FTI Consulting, where several former FBI officials work, conducted probe but stayed in touch with law enforcement, the person said. WhatsApp was not contacted by FTI during the investigation, a person familiar with the matter said. Also new: Oct 2018 contract btwn Michael Sanchez and AMI gave rights to “certain information, photographs, and text messages documenting an affair between Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.” Mr. Sanchez "acquired Confidential Information lawfully,” stated contract, seen by WSJ. https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1220073641326665731 https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1220073641326665731
- wyxuan 7y ago
  Sure they said that, but they likely did that to cover up the Saudi hack of Bezo's phone
  - ggm 7y ago
    Occam's razor cuts both ways. If you believe the conspiracy, the most likely reason is the bad one. But, its conjecture at best, either way. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. we can't tell.
  - mzs 7y ago
    Of course it's possible that in April the folks working for MBS realized that Bezos was not going to place his thumb on the reporting done by WaPo so they hacked his phone primarily as a means to spy and get ahead of future news, then they found compromising materials and used AMI to try and blackmail Bezos, but that is all speculation.
- MiroF 7y ago
  > Bezos didn’t want to provide his phone directly to the FBI telling..
  - xxpor 7y ago
    I'm fairly certain any lawyer would tell you that the right move.
- meowface 7y ago
  Is there evidence of explicit attempted blackmailing? Based on the screenshotted WhatsApp messages, it kind of seemed more like vengeance and taunting than extortion. There's surely an implied "this is what happens when you fuck with us", and an attempt to instill fear in Bezos, but I think he'd have to be really naive to seriously believe the threat of exposing an affair would actually get Bezos to tell the Washington Post to back off from reporting on Saudi Arabia. Even if that sort of thing has worked for him in the past, I think he's gotta know that's a pretty farfetched outcome for Bezos and WaPo. Not defending MBS, of course; he's obviously a megalomaniac despot who brutally murders critics and probably does all sorts of other horrific things the public isn't aware of. But I don't see evidence of demands made by him or anything like that in the report. If I were to bet on it, I suspect the primary intention was to spy on Bezos and his close contacts, with a secondary intention of petty revenge, and a third intention of intimidation. The Khashogghi thing felt like revenge, too, rather than some sort of cool-headed political calculus. You probably don't torture and chop someone up if you don't have a grudge. Intimidation definitely is in the same ballpark as blackmail, but it's not exactly the same. I think he might just feel the need to retaliate against who he considers his opponents, due to his immense ego and upbringing. WaPo, and, by extension, Bezos, may have genuinely hurt his ego. He's probably the most powerful human being alive - in his own mind. He may not be wise enough to realize all of this stuff inevitably ends up backfiring on him, with a geopolitical sort of Streisand effect. Though the intelligence he gained from a year's worth of access to Bezos' phone might have made it worth it in the end. If this is accurate, then the sources saying they were aware of the plan to hack Bezos' phone but not aware of an attempt to blackmail him may be technically telling the truth. Also, this is obviously all uninformed armchair psychoanalysis. I could easily be completely wrong about most or all of this.
  - mzs 7y ago
    I was wondering why someone replied to me stating basically what was in the WSJ article* I submitted and then I noticed that the submission was changed to a Vice article instead. The Vice article based on the report obtained by Motherboard is interesting, but I don't think it captures what the original did. In part WSJ points-out: >Saudi government spokesmen didn't respond to a request for comment. Saudi officials close to the crown prince said they were aware of a plan to hack Mr. Bezos' phone, but not of any attempt to blackmail him. It seems to me that those officials are claiming that MBS wanted to merely influence coverage in WaPo via Bezos. Also this is not the first time MBS proponents have blamed Saud al Qahtani, so I take that part of the Vice article with some salt: https://nyti.ms/2W5YDkY https://nyti.ms/2W5YDkY Another aside from annex two of yesterday's OHCHR report: https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1220062905699393536 https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/122006290569939353... >MBS meets Trump at White House March 20, 2018. According Bezos timeline, Bezos gets invite to dinner with MBS - March 21,2018. April 4, 2018 Bezos & MBS connect on WhatsApp * for those without a WSJ subscription, Dow Jones republished the article cause it appeared in print version of the WSJ https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020012215312/un-suggests-bezos-phone-was-hacked-using-saudi-crown-princes-account-3rd-update https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020012215312/un-... Also here is a statement from NSO https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020012215313/un-suggests-bezos-phone-was-hacked-using-saudi-2 https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020012215313/un-... edit: dang moved it, that's why I got confused https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22124049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22124049
killface 7y ago
Well no shit. It's the last remaining major media that isn't actively trying to cover up Trump crimes, or sweep Bernie under the rug (even though they do that a little bit). The republicans have succeeded in their soft coup, now they're just trying to get all their propaganda arms in line. Notice what a good lapdog CNN has been, lately?
- johng 7y ago
  I don't think the right need to sweep Bernie under the rug. The Democratic party is doing a good job of that themselves, and essentially telling every democratic voter that they don't give a damn what you think, they'll pick who's best for you and you'll like it no matter what. Votes be damned.
  - lukifer 7y ago
    In fairness, I read their comment as indicting the left-leaning media for sweeping Bernie under the rug, not the right. If anything, Fox kinda likes Bernie, whether it's a grudging respect for his honesty, or that his socialist brand inflames their base, or simply that he ruffles the feathers of the more mainstream Democrats.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  > Notice what a good lapdog CNN has been, lately? No, I don't. And I think it is your perception that is faulty, rather than mine.
- lukifer 7y ago
  I don't disagree; but propaganda is in the eye of the beholder. Eric Weinstein's podcast [0][1] has recently been discussing similar phenomena in left-leaning media and academia, under the label "Distributed Idea-Suppression Complex" (including alleged media blackouts of Bernie + Yang). At first order of approximation, a lot can be explained by simple incentives, and who pays the bills (ie, advertisers, which at that scale necessarily include megacorporations who are hyper-sensitive to any PR impacts across their hundreds of subsidiary brands). But there's something bigger than that: a sort of credibility table-stakes, demanding alignment with a particular narrative ecosystem to be let into the party. What's insidious about this sort of self-selecting self-censorship is that it requires little-to-no to centralized orchestration; just swarms of conforming individuals who know where they're bread is buttered. As soon as one is rewarded by punishing a heretic, thus setting an example to others to not stray too far afield, a particular complex can ossify quickly. While it's false equivalence to claim that MSNBC/etc actively propagandizes to the same extent as Fox (especially aggregated over the last twenty years), the phenomenon seems to occur independently of political preferences or ideology; even rationalist, free-speech-absolutist communities can develop sacred cows, talking points, and taboos. In essence, I think there's an argument that the media has always had a propagandistic element (as discussed vociferously by Chomsky), allowing some range of open debate, while simultaneously marking some views as a priori off limits. What's changed is that the media landscape has fractionated: left-vs-right in traditional broadcast, and a long tail of communities and media bubbles and cults of personality online. What's more, I'd suggest that within each media sub-landscape, the range of acceptable debate has significantly narrowed; debate is now something that happens between tribes, rather than something that is permissible internally. What's your reasoning as to the (non-Fox) media "actively trying to cover up Trump crimes"? It seems to me that circa 2017, they were on top of Trump's shenanigans (the demand was there, and it was good for ratings and profits); I still see no shortage of anti-Trump content, but I think everyone's burned out by the horrific normalcy of it all. Do you see something being actively orchestrated, beyond just advertisers/ratings/etc, and if so, why and by whom? [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/18-slipping-the-disc-state-of-the-portal-chapter-2020/id1469999563?i=1000462651162 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/18-slipping-the-disc-s... [1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-prediction-and-the-disc/id1469999563?i=1000462975502 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-...
wallace_f 7y ago
Why won't Bezos give his phone to the trustworthy FBI? Is he trying to perpetuate fake news. Our country and tech news is filled with Fake News and Russian Assets peddling it. Yesterday Fake News Lord and Russian Asset Glenn Greenwald was on the front page here. Another King of Fake News and Russian Asset Julian Assange frequently on the front page here. Russian Asset Snowden possibly most-discussed person on HN. We have Russian Assets literally as president, running for president, and in the legislator like Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Justin Amash. Why won't Bezos give his phone to the FBI. Is Bezos now also really peddling Fake News? What if everyone is a Russian Asset? From now on I get my news directly from trustworthy Real News sources, only. Like the FBI and State Department.
- dang 7y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
viburnum 7y ago
A good solution would be if the news media wasn’t owned by billionaires.
- tzs 7y ago
  How would that solve anything? Millionaires, and even mere thousandaires, have smartphones too nowadays which could contain information an attacker might find useful to try to influence them.
- ergothus 7y ago
  Actually, in this case Bezos has shown a resistance to corrupt influence BECAUSE he's a billionaire. (I'm not disputing the list of corrupting influences DUE to being a billionaire, just pointing out this particular case may have the opposite) Having a larger number of respected media outlets could help. Having news and money separated is great, but hard to implement. (patches welcome!) . Having media outlets that no individual or small group can control, regardless of their money, also good but tricky.
  - frandroid 7y ago
    Meh. I mean sure, Bezos has been a different media owner than Rupert Murdoch, but in the end, the WaPo enforces the neoliberal order, with some sprinkling of liberal concern to re-assure people that yes, humanist concerns are important. But you won't find an editorial line that challenges capitalism, or wanton CO2 emissions which will rapidly kill our planet. Or Amazon, for that matter. Not an unimportant factor considering Bezos' position atop the pyramid...
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      You might find this tweet thread interesting about a large list of 'anti-interesting' stories. Stories that have been conspicuously ignored by the corporate media. https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1220179670802395137?s=19 https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/122017967080239513...
- wyxuan 7y ago
cryoshon 7y ago
hacking of bezos' phone by MBS of KSA suggests an effort by the saudis to influence news coverage so that their backwards petrostate is not excoriated as routinely or as comprehensively for its cornucopia of egregiously unacceptable faults. there may also be some sort of wrondoing on behalf of trump in this incident, but i think it's too early to say either way. on the bright side, this flap is a battle of billionaires. whoever loses, we win. at the current stage of the news cycle, it looks like MBS is down for the count, meaning that we're that much closer to being able to exclude KSA from world affairs until it modernizes. but, we'll have to see where it goes. if the media and the UN don't carry this investigation to its conclusion, there's still a chance the perpetrators could weasel away. relatedly, this is the second incident in which someone has sought to blackmail bezos and failed horribly. i usually don't appreciate bezos, but the guy's unflappable. i wonder what bezos is doing behind the scenes to get back at the perpetrators, if anything.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  > ...this flap is a battle of billionaires. whoever loses, we win Why? Does power or wealth leak back to society amid the Game of Thrones?
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    Lol of course not. We just get owned again. And the smiling continues.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Love the comment. As long as one powerful entity is weaker we are all stronger. In reality no matter who wins we all lose in different ways. A weak Saudi makes Iran stronger. A weak Bezo means lobbying and laws that will affect us in someway.
  - yingw787 7y ago
    Yeah...OP's comment doesn't make sense to me either. And frankly, MBS is far more powerful than Bezos is. It's a battle between a billionaire living amongst other billionaires in a republic, and a multi-trillionaire who's an absolute monarch leading a great power.
m0zg 7y ago
To me the report sounds like an amateur job TBH and there's nothing in it to tie anything to anybody conclusively. They don't have the malware. They don't know which data was exfiltrated or where it went. They don't know how the supposed "malware" achieved persistence. They don't know how it worked around Apple's (rather elaborate) encryption and sandboxing. Basically if you read the report all they really have is "Bezos received a video, and the phone started sending a bunch of data afterwards, we don't know to who, what data, or how any this was done. That'll be one million dollars in fees, Jeff, thank you very much". Maybe Bezos was just sending a bunch of dick pics to his girlfriend? Have they considered this possibility? Could an actual, prominent security researcher take a look and confirm/disprove my suspicions?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- MiroF 7y ago
  If the video contains an encrypted binary as suggested in the report, then that is telling..
  - m0zg 7y ago
    "Encrypted binary" is something that you'd say if you wanted to impress the mainstream media who can't tell a cipher from a hole in the ground. It can't run if it's fully encrypted. It'd have to decrypt itself somehow. If it can do it, it can be done outside the device, too.
    - MiroF 7y ago
      All I'm saying is that it is evidence that the file was in some way malicious.
    - szc 7y ago
      The code signing system on iOS doesn't let you dynamically add code to your app. I am also very curious about what "it is a downloader" means - if the architecture of WhatsApp means that it has a built in; externally accessible / triggerable, network capable scripting engine then that is really, really bad. I would be really worried about that app if it is true. [added] The report writer may not have chosen the best way to phrase this. What it might mean is that the investigators believe that the "malicious" payload that compromises WhatsApp is in that part of the message, not in the video. As they weren't able to get that piece, they weren't able work out how the exploit worked.
scottlocklin 7y ago
Jayzus the "forensics" on this are ridiculously shallow.[1] In fact, they are a giant nothingburger. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.[2] And now I'm being lectured by a couple of no-name UN ding dongs as to why "it" was done as if "it" were a fact. I have a more parsimonious explanation: Bezos was cheating on his wife and feeling guilty about it, and was paranoid about being caught. The memes which were supposedly veiled threats ... the women doesn't look remotely like his girlfriend. Saudi Barbaria is a terrible place, and you probably shouldn't accept whatsapp messages from the scum who run it. That doesn't mean they hacked Oligarch Bezos' cell phone. [1] https://t.co/fxesTmeD40 https://t.co/fxesTmeD40 [2] https://medium.com/@billmarczak/bezos-hack-mbs-mohammed-bin-salman-whatsapp-218e1b4e1242 https://medium.com/@billmarczak/bezos-hack-mbs-mohammed-bin-...
jdkee 7y ago
“Making my job harder, every day.” -W. Gibson via Twitter, 01/22/2020. https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1219791756830466049 https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1219791756830466049
- kryogen1c 7y ago
  “The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense” Tom Clancy
mirimir 7y ago
Edit: It'd be really useful if someone could say where I've gone wrong here. Just sayin', y'all. This is very confusing. > “Due to end-to-end encryption employed by WhatsApp, it is impossible to decrypt the contents of the downloader to determine if it contained any malicious code in addition to the delivered video,” the investigators found. That's a pretty standard malware trick, right? It decrypts itself when it executes. So why can't they execute it in a test environment? > “During the initial attempt to collect a forensic image of the iPhone, FTI determined that the device had iTunes backup encryption enabled, and that full analysis of the contents of the forensic image would require the encryption password,” the report states. Well, then. Why didn't they get it? Too great a threat to Bezos' privacy, I guess. > They apparently never obtained the password, however, because the report states that on May 20, 2019, the investigators “tested options for bypassing the iTunes backup encryption password” and ended up resetting “All Settings” on Bezos’ iPhone X to restore the device’s settings to factory defaults, thereby “removing the encryption password while preserving the file system and any relevant data and artifacts. FTI received authorization to perform this resetting step, did so, and then commenced acquisition of an unencrypted Cellebrite forensic image.” That is totally bizarre. I mean, isn't that almost evidence destruction? You might to that to a clone, but not to the actual device. But then, I'm just a punter.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  I'm guessing we're supposed to believe the conspiracy theory being shilled in the media for some zany political reasons. Nobody sent me the memo as to what these zany political reasons are either; maybe I should buy a TV. This "report" is obvious bullshit -I mean, conclusions may be true, but if the report is all they have ... I hope it's a weak attempt at parallel construction.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Hey, thanks. It just seems so damn obvious that there's nothing more in the report than "he downloaded file, and his phone started sending lots of data". That is suspicious, I admit. But correlation isn't causation. And we don't even know how good the correlation was, and what else he was doing.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
Remember when American Media tried to extort Bezos with dick pics? In the terms they tried to force him to agree to, this line stands out: 4. AM affirms that it undertook no electronic eavesdropping in connection with its reporting and has no knowledge of such conduct. https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146... And note this all happened after the suspected hack. Curiouser and curiouser -- it looks like the Saudis were the source of the images, which also explains why AMI was trying so hard to stifle Washington Post's reporting regarding the Saudi murder of Khashoggi.
jml7c5 7y ago
What does a WhatsApp .enc file contain, apart from its media? The report describes it as a "downloader", but that doesn't make a lot of sense. Are they suggesting the .enc file is malformed, such that when WhatsApp tries to parse it (or when creating it), some security flaw in WhatsApp allows arbitrary code execution? (I.e., .enc files in general are not "downloaders".)
- mirimir 7y ago
  So maybe this involves a WhatsApp 0day? If it's something that's been fixed since May 2018, then the malicious .enc file would either not work, or work normally. One thinks that such possibilities could be explored in a suitable test environment.
sytelus 7y ago
You might ask who can touch the man with $100 billion? Turns out its the man with $1 trillion. So that the amount of wealth one needs where you can truly be above justice and law under all and any circumstances turns out to be $1 trillion. With that wealth, one can purchase all of the available human labor in the entirety of a big city like Los Angeles for his sole purpose perpetually or you can maintain a human army that is twice as big as the US army! This is the magic level of wealth where you are not obeying the law but rather creating ones. You, in essence, become the law at that level of wealth.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- meowface 7y ago
  I understand your point, but it's really his bloodline and position that's the bulk of his power, not his wealth. The position grants the wealth, but the inverse is definitely not implied. A random private citizen worth $1 trillion would be much less powerful and probably much less brazen. (Though certainly still very powerful.)
  - atomi 7y ago
    A lot of his power comes from the insulation he receives from those around him. Generally this reliance leads increasingly to paranoia and in large part this is why we're seeing these crazy headlines. See Peter Falk in "The Mirror" episode of the Twilight Zone.
  - sytelus 7y ago
    When the president of the United States gave him a pass, it wasn't because of his bloodline but the fact he was willing to spend a few billion dollars on purchasing some army equipment.
    - meowface 7y ago
      Was it "his" money, or Saudi Arabia's, though?
poundtown 7y ago
came here to find out how it was done....disappointed
humble_engineer 7y ago
There is no evidence any of this happened.

84 points by mudil 7y ago

mzs 7y ago

journalist's thread > NEW: Saudi officials close to MBS tell WSJ they were aware of a plan to hack Bezos' phone, but not of any attempt to blackmail him. Qahtani was involved in the hacking effort as part of a broader intimidation campaign against Khashoggi, officials said. More: FBI is investigating the hack, source says. Bezos didn’t want to provide his phone directly to the FBI, so FTI Consulting, where several former FBI officials work, conducted probe but stayed in touch with law enforcement, the person said. WhatsApp was not contacted by FTI during the investigation, a person familiar with the matter said. Also new: Oct 2018 contract btwn Michael Sanchez and AMI gave rights to “certain information, photographs, and text messages documenting an affair between Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.” Mr. Sanchez "acquired Confidential Information lawfully,” stated contract, seen by WSJ. https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1220073641326665731 https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1220073641326665731

wyxuan 7y ago
Sure they said that, but they likely did that to cover up the Saudi hack of Bezo's phone
- ggm 7y ago
  Occam's razor cuts both ways. If you believe the conspiracy, the most likely reason is the bad one. But, its conjecture at best, either way. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. we can't tell.
- mzs 7y ago
  Of course it's possible that in April the folks working for MBS realized that Bezos was not going to place his thumb on the reporting done by WaPo so they hacked his phone primarily as a means to spy and get ahead of future news, then they found compromising materials and used AMI to try and blackmail Bezos, but that is all speculation.
MiroF 7y ago
> Bezos didn’t want to provide his phone directly to the FBI telling..
- xxpor 7y ago
  I'm fairly certain any lawyer would tell you that the right move.
meowface 7y ago
Is there evidence of explicit attempted blackmailing? Based on the screenshotted WhatsApp messages, it kind of seemed more like vengeance and taunting than extortion. There's surely an implied "this is what happens when you fuck with us", and an attempt to instill fear in Bezos, but I think he'd have to be really naive to seriously believe the threat of exposing an affair would actually get Bezos to tell the Washington Post to back off from reporting on Saudi Arabia. Even if that sort of thing has worked for him in the past, I think he's gotta know that's a pretty farfetched outcome for Bezos and WaPo. Not defending MBS, of course; he's obviously a megalomaniac despot who brutally murders critics and probably does all sorts of other horrific things the public isn't aware of. But I don't see evidence of demands made by him or anything like that in the report. If I were to bet on it, I suspect the primary intention was to spy on Bezos and his close contacts, with a secondary intention of petty revenge, and a third intention of intimidation. The Khashogghi thing felt like revenge, too, rather than some sort of cool-headed political calculus. You probably don't torture and chop someone up if you don't have a grudge. Intimidation definitely is in the same ballpark as blackmail, but it's not exactly the same. I think he might just feel the need to retaliate against who he considers his opponents, due to his immense ego and upbringing. WaPo, and, by extension, Bezos, may have genuinely hurt his ego. He's probably the most powerful human being alive - in his own mind. He may not be wise enough to realize all of this stuff inevitably ends up backfiring on him, with a geopolitical sort of Streisand effect. Though the intelligence he gained from a year's worth of access to Bezos' phone might have made it worth it in the end. If this is accurate, then the sources saying they were aware of the plan to hack Bezos' phone but not aware of an attempt to blackmail him may be technically telling the truth. Also, this is obviously all uninformed armchair psychoanalysis. I could easily be completely wrong about most or all of this.
- mzs 7y ago
  I was wondering why someone replied to me stating basically what was in the WSJ article* I submitted and then I noticed that the submission was changed to a Vice article instead. The Vice article based on the report obtained by Motherboard is interesting, but I don't think it captures what the original did. In part WSJ points-out: >Saudi government spokesmen didn't respond to a request for comment. Saudi officials close to the crown prince said they were aware of a plan to hack Mr. Bezos' phone, but not of any attempt to blackmail him. It seems to me that those officials are claiming that MBS wanted to merely influence coverage in WaPo via Bezos. Also this is not the first time MBS proponents have blamed Saud al Qahtani, so I take that part of the Vice article with some salt: https://nyti.ms/2W5YDkY https://nyti.ms/2W5YDkY Another aside from annex two of yesterday's OHCHR report: https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1220062905699393536 https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/122006290569939353... >MBS meets Trump at White House March 20, 2018. According Bezos timeline, Bezos gets invite to dinner with MBS - March 21,2018. April 4, 2018 Bezos & MBS connect on WhatsApp * for those without a WSJ subscription, Dow Jones republished the article cause it appeared in print version of the WSJ https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020012215312/un-suggests-bezos-phone-was-hacked-using-saudi-crown-princes-account-3rd-update https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020012215312/un-... Also here is a statement from NSO https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020012215313/un-suggests-bezos-phone-was-hacked-using-saudi-2 https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020012215313/un-... edit: dang moved it, that's why I got confused https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22124049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22124049

killface 7y ago

Well no shit. It's the last remaining major media that isn't actively trying to cover up Trump crimes, or sweep Bernie under the rug (even though they do that a little bit). The republicans have succeeded in their soft coup, now they're just trying to get all their propaganda arms in line. Notice what a good lapdog CNN has been, lately?

johng 7y ago
I don't think the right need to sweep Bernie under the rug. The Democratic party is doing a good job of that themselves, and essentially telling every democratic voter that they don't give a damn what you think, they'll pick who's best for you and you'll like it no matter what. Votes be damned.
- lukifer 7y ago
  In fairness, I read their comment as indicting the left-leaning media for sweeping Bernie under the rug, not the right. If anything, Fox kinda likes Bernie, whether it's a grudging respect for his honesty, or that his socialist brand inflames their base, or simply that he ruffles the feathers of the more mainstream Democrats.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
> Notice what a good lapdog CNN has been, lately? No, I don't. And I think it is your perception that is faulty, rather than mine.
lukifer 7y ago
I don't disagree; but propaganda is in the eye of the beholder. Eric Weinstein's podcast [0][1] has recently been discussing similar phenomena in left-leaning media and academia, under the label "Distributed Idea-Suppression Complex" (including alleged media blackouts of Bernie + Yang). At first order of approximation, a lot can be explained by simple incentives, and who pays the bills (ie, advertisers, which at that scale necessarily include megacorporations who are hyper-sensitive to any PR impacts across their hundreds of subsidiary brands). But there's something bigger than that: a sort of credibility table-stakes, demanding alignment with a particular narrative ecosystem to be let into the party. What's insidious about this sort of self-selecting self-censorship is that it requires little-to-no to centralized orchestration; just swarms of conforming individuals who know where they're bread is buttered. As soon as one is rewarded by punishing a heretic, thus setting an example to others to not stray too far afield, a particular complex can ossify quickly. While it's false equivalence to claim that MSNBC/etc actively propagandizes to the same extent as Fox (especially aggregated over the last twenty years), the phenomenon seems to occur independently of political preferences or ideology; even rationalist, free-speech-absolutist communities can develop sacred cows, talking points, and taboos. In essence, I think there's an argument that the media has always had a propagandistic element (as discussed vociferously by Chomsky), allowing some range of open debate, while simultaneously marking some views as a priori off limits. What's changed is that the media landscape has fractionated: left-vs-right in traditional broadcast, and a long tail of communities and media bubbles and cults of personality online. What's more, I'd suggest that within each media sub-landscape, the range of acceptable debate has significantly narrowed; debate is now something that happens between tribes, rather than something that is permissible internally. What's your reasoning as to the (non-Fox) media "actively trying to cover up Trump crimes"? It seems to me that circa 2017, they were on top of Trump's shenanigans (the demand was there, and it was good for ratings and profits); I still see no shortage of anti-Trump content, but I think everyone's burned out by the horrific normalcy of it all. Do you see something being actively orchestrated, beyond just advertisers/ratings/etc, and if so, why and by whom? [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/18-slipping-the-disc-state-of-the-portal-chapter-2020/id1469999563?i=1000462651162 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/18-slipping-the-disc-s... [1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-prediction-and-the-disc/id1469999563?i=1000462975502 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-...

wallace_f 7y ago

Why won't Bezos give his phone to the trustworthy FBI? Is he trying to perpetuate fake news. Our country and tech news is filled with Fake News and Russian Assets peddling it. Yesterday Fake News Lord and Russian Asset Glenn Greenwald was on the front page here. Another King of Fake News and Russian Asset Julian Assange frequently on the front page here. Russian Asset Snowden possibly most-discussed person on HN. We have Russian Assets literally as president, running for president, and in the legislator like Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Justin Amash. Why won't Bezos give his phone to the FBI. Is Bezos now also really peddling Fake News? What if everyone is a Russian Asset? From now on I get my news directly from trustworthy Real News sources, only. Like the FBI and State Department.

dang 7y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

viburnum 7y ago

A good solution would be if the news media wasn’t owned by billionaires.

tzs 7y ago
How would that solve anything? Millionaires, and even mere thousandaires, have smartphones too nowadays which could contain information an attacker might find useful to try to influence them.
ergothus 7y ago
Actually, in this case Bezos has shown a resistance to corrupt influence BECAUSE he's a billionaire. (I'm not disputing the list of corrupting influences DUE to being a billionaire, just pointing out this particular case may have the opposite) Having a larger number of respected media outlets could help. Having news and money separated is great, but hard to implement. (patches welcome!) . Having media outlets that no individual or small group can control, regardless of their money, also good but tricky.
- frandroid 7y ago
  Meh. I mean sure, Bezos has been a different media owner than Rupert Murdoch, but in the end, the WaPo enforces the neoliberal order, with some sprinkling of liberal concern to re-assure people that yes, humanist concerns are important. But you won't find an editorial line that challenges capitalism, or wanton CO2 emissions which will rapidly kill our planet. Or Amazon, for that matter. Not an unimportant factor considering Bezos' position atop the pyramid...
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    You might find this tweet thread interesting about a large list of 'anti-interesting' stories. Stories that have been conspicuously ignored by the corporate media. https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1220179670802395137?s=19 https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/122017967080239513...
wyxuan 7y ago

cryoshon 7y ago

hacking of bezos' phone by MBS of KSA suggests an effort by the saudis to influence news coverage so that their backwards petrostate is not excoriated as routinely or as comprehensively for its cornucopia of egregiously unacceptable faults. there may also be some sort of wrondoing on behalf of trump in this incident, but i think it's too early to say either way. on the bright side, this flap is a battle of billionaires. whoever loses, we win. at the current stage of the news cycle, it looks like MBS is down for the count, meaning that we're that much closer to being able to exclude KSA from world affairs until it modernizes. but, we'll have to see where it goes. if the media and the UN don't carry this investigation to its conclusion, there's still a chance the perpetrators could weasel away. relatedly, this is the second incident in which someone has sought to blackmail bezos and failed horribly. i usually don't appreciate bezos, but the guy's unflappable. i wonder what bezos is doing behind the scenes to get back at the perpetrators, if anything.

threatofrain 7y ago
> ...this flap is a battle of billionaires. whoever loses, we win Why? Does power or wealth leak back to society amid the Game of Thrones?
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  Lol of course not. We just get owned again. And the smiling continues.
- wolco 7y ago
  Love the comment. As long as one powerful entity is weaker we are all stronger. In reality no matter who wins we all lose in different ways. A weak Saudi makes Iran stronger. A weak Bezo means lobbying and laws that will affect us in someway.
- yingw787 7y ago
  Yeah...OP's comment doesn't make sense to me either. And frankly, MBS is far more powerful than Bezos is. It's a battle between a billionaire living amongst other billionaires in a republic, and a multi-trillionaire who's an absolute monarch leading a great power.

m0zg 7y ago

To me the report sounds like an amateur job TBH and there's nothing in it to tie anything to anybody conclusively. They don't have the malware. They don't know which data was exfiltrated or where it went. They don't know how the supposed "malware" achieved persistence. They don't know how it worked around Apple's (rather elaborate) encryption and sandboxing. Basically if you read the report all they really have is "Bezos received a video, and the phone started sending a bunch of data afterwards, we don't know to who, what data, or how any this was done. That'll be one million dollars in fees, Jeff, thank you very much". Maybe Bezos was just sending a bunch of dick pics to his girlfriend? Have they considered this possibility? Could an actual, prominent security researcher take a look and confirm/disprove my suspicions?

deleted 7y ago
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MiroF 7y ago
If the video contains an encrypted binary as suggested in the report, then that is telling..
- m0zg 7y ago
  "Encrypted binary" is something that you'd say if you wanted to impress the mainstream media who can't tell a cipher from a hole in the ground. It can't run if it's fully encrypted. It'd have to decrypt itself somehow. If it can do it, it can be done outside the device, too.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    All I'm saying is that it is evidence that the file was in some way malicious.
  - szc 7y ago
    The code signing system on iOS doesn't let you dynamically add code to your app. I am also very curious about what "it is a downloader" means - if the architecture of WhatsApp means that it has a built in; externally accessible / triggerable, network capable scripting engine then that is really, really bad. I would be really worried about that app if it is true. [added] The report writer may not have chosen the best way to phrase this. What it might mean is that the investigators believe that the "malicious" payload that compromises WhatsApp is in that part of the message, not in the video. As they weren't able to get that piece, they weren't able work out how the exploit worked.

scottlocklin 7y ago

Jayzus the "forensics" on this are ridiculously shallow.[1] In fact, they are a giant nothingburger. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.[2] And now I'm being lectured by a couple of no-name UN ding dongs as to why "it" was done as if "it" were a fact. I have a more parsimonious explanation: Bezos was cheating on his wife and feeling guilty about it, and was paranoid about being caught. The memes which were supposedly veiled threats ... the women doesn't look remotely like his girlfriend. Saudi Barbaria is a terrible place, and you probably shouldn't accept whatsapp messages from the scum who run it. That doesn't mean they hacked Oligarch Bezos' cell phone. [1] https://t.co/fxesTmeD40 https://t.co/fxesTmeD40 [2] https://medium.com/@billmarczak/bezos-hack-mbs-mohammed-bin-salman-whatsapp-218e1b4e1242 https://medium.com/@billmarczak/bezos-hack-mbs-mohammed-bin-...

jdkee 7y ago

“Making my job harder, every day.” -W. Gibson via Twitter, 01/22/2020. https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1219791756830466049 https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1219791756830466049

kryogen1c 7y ago
“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense” Tom Clancy

mirimir 7y ago

Edit: It'd be really useful if someone could say where I've gone wrong here. Just sayin', y'all. This is very confusing. > “Due to end-to-end encryption employed by WhatsApp, it is impossible to decrypt the contents of the downloader to determine if it contained any malicious code in addition to the delivered video,” the investigators found. That's a pretty standard malware trick, right? It decrypts itself when it executes. So why can't they execute it in a test environment? > “During the initial attempt to collect a forensic image of the iPhone, FTI determined that the device had iTunes backup encryption enabled, and that full analysis of the contents of the forensic image would require the encryption password,” the report states. Well, then. Why didn't they get it? Too great a threat to Bezos' privacy, I guess. > They apparently never obtained the password, however, because the report states that on May 20, 2019, the investigators “tested options for bypassing the iTunes backup encryption password” and ended up resetting “All Settings” on Bezos’ iPhone X to restore the device’s settings to factory defaults, thereby “removing the encryption password while preserving the file system and any relevant data and artifacts. FTI received authorization to perform this resetting step, did so, and then commenced acquisition of an unencrypted Cellebrite forensic image.” That is totally bizarre. I mean, isn't that almost evidence destruction? You might to that to a clone, but not to the actual device. But then, I'm just a punter.

scottlocklin 7y ago
I'm guessing we're supposed to believe the conspiracy theory being shilled in the media for some zany political reasons. Nobody sent me the memo as to what these zany political reasons are either; maybe I should buy a TV. This "report" is obvious bullshit -I mean, conclusions may be true, but if the report is all they have ... I hope it's a weak attempt at parallel construction.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Hey, thanks. It just seems so damn obvious that there's nothing more in the report than "he downloaded file, and his phone started sending lots of data". That is suspicious, I admit. But correlation isn't causation. And we don't even know how good the correlation was, and what else he was doing.

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

Remember when American Media tried to extort Bezos with dick pics? In the terms they tried to force him to agree to, this line stands out: 4. AM affirms that it undertook no electronic eavesdropping in connection with its reporting and has no knowledge of such conduct. https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146... And note this all happened after the suspected hack. Curiouser and curiouser -- it looks like the Saudis were the source of the images, which also explains why AMI was trying so hard to stifle Washington Post's reporting regarding the Saudi murder of Khashoggi.

jml7c5 7y ago

What does a WhatsApp .enc file contain, apart from its media? The report describes it as a "downloader", but that doesn't make a lot of sense. Are they suggesting the .enc file is malformed, such that when WhatsApp tries to parse it (or when creating it), some security flaw in WhatsApp allows arbitrary code execution? (I.e., .enc files in general are not "downloaders".)

mirimir 7y ago
So maybe this involves a WhatsApp 0day? If it's something that's been fixed since May 2018, then the malicious .enc file would either not work, or work normally. One thinks that such possibilities could be explored in a suitable test environment.

sytelus 7y ago

You might ask who can touch the man with $100 billion? Turns out its the man with $1 trillion. So that the amount of wealth one needs where you can truly be above justice and law under all and any circumstances turns out to be $1 trillion. With that wealth, one can purchase all of the available human labor in the entirety of a big city like Los Angeles for his sole purpose perpetually or you can maintain a human army that is twice as big as the US army! This is the magic level of wealth where you are not obeying the law but rather creating ones. You, in essence, become the law at that level of wealth.

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meowface 7y ago
I understand your point, but it's really his bloodline and position that's the bulk of his power, not his wealth. The position grants the wealth, but the inverse is definitely not implied. A random private citizen worth $1 trillion would be much less powerful and probably much less brazen. (Though certainly still very powerful.)
- atomi 7y ago
  A lot of his power comes from the insulation he receives from those around him. Generally this reliance leads increasingly to paranoia and in large part this is why we're seeing these crazy headlines. See Peter Falk in "The Mirror" episode of the Twilight Zone.
- sytelus 7y ago
  When the president of the United States gave him a pass, it wasn't because of his bloodline but the fact he was willing to spend a few billion dollars on purchasing some army equipment.
  - meowface 7y ago
    Was it "his" money, or Saudi Arabia's, though?

poundtown 7y ago

came here to find out how it was done....disappointed

humble_engineer 7y ago

There is no evidence any of this happened.