[HN Gopher] Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crow...
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Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'
Author : mnem
Score : 176 points
Date : 2020-01-21 21:05 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| henryw wrote:
| I'm glad it's fixed now.
| https://www.facebook.com/security/advisories/cve-2019-11931
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| This isn't the correct bug.
| danso wrote:
| At the time, FB said it didn't believe the bug had been
| exploited: _In this instance there is no reason to believe
| users were impacted._ [0] The alleged hack of Bezos happened in
| May 2018, about 18 months after the Nov 2019 bug fix. I wonder
| if FB 's statement was just boilerplate PR or if they really
| did substantial forensics to have "no reason to believe users
| were impacted".
|
| [0] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/11/20/update-
| whatsapp-...
| moralestapia wrote:
| s/after/before/
| penagwin wrote:
| Anecdotal, but a lot of times phrases similar to that are
| used because the real answer is "We don't have any way of
| knowing if users were actually impacted" and it's obviously
| far better for PR to phrase it that way.
| clubm8 wrote:
| I wonder how often less high profile folks get hit with stuff
| like this?
|
| On one hand, zero days are rare and expensive.
|
| OTOH someone who isn't the CEO of a major company might not
| notice the malware, or if they do, not know they should forward
| it to an organization like Citizen Lab.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| So MBS or someone in Saudi intelligence is somehow behind the
| leak of the photos to the National Enquirer, and the subsequent
| divorce of the Bezos?
| notadoc wrote:
| Or someone/group/agency who was able to compromise MBS phone or
| WhatsApp account.
|
| There are a lot of possibilities here, what a wild story.
| zknz wrote:
| The Bezos's are responsible for their actions, and their
| decision to divorce, but yes, the leak could have been via
| saudis...
| munk-a wrote:
| In the end we're all responsible for our own actions - but
| there are a lot of outside factors that influence us. The
| leak appears to have been a significant factor. I'm less
| interested in the fact that infidelity would likely have
| eventually lead to the divorce (though if it was privately
| dealt with it may not have) - I'm more curious if the timing
| was advantageous for MBS. This is all pure speculation,
| though.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| I guess Khashoggi must have really annoyed MBS. This has now
| cost the Saudis at least ten times as much goodwill as all
| anti-Saudi editorials in the Post and everywhere else together.
|
| That, or it was a favour to MBS American friends. The other
| people involved (David Pecker et al) and MBS do share a few
| friends in the White House, who also seem obsessed with the
| Washington Post and Bezos himself.
| jonknee wrote:
| Well, MBS certainly has his own reasons to not like the owner
| of the Washington Post.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| Khashoggi wrote for the Washington Post, so it wouldn't be a
| favor for Trump. It would be consistent with his own
| motivations for murdering Khashoggi.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| The texts were leaked by the brother of the mistress.
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/mistress-lauren-sanchezs-broth...
| p0rkbelly wrote:
| No, that's what The Inquirer and others said as cover. There
| was no proof of that, and this article from the Guardian goes
| into those details as well.
| slg wrote:
| That was what Bezos's camp has been saying from almost the very
| beginning. The news here isn't the suspected involvement of the
| Saudis, the news is that MBS is directly implicated.
| bb88 wrote:
| Where's the Feds on this? I don't find it comforting that
| attacks happening on the US's free press go unanswered by law
| enforcement.
|
| We should be indicting MBS.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| This is the same administration that calls a free press "the
| enemy of the people", and has co-opted a Nazi slur
| (lugenpresse) to label them. The same administration that
| used its friends at the National Enquirer to attempt to
| blackmail Ronin Farrow, and the same administration that
| looked away as a us resident journalist was tortured,
| murdered, and dismembered. The idea that Trump disapproves of
| attempts to blackmail Bezos strains credulity.
| nif2ee wrote:
| >Jeff Bezos chatting with Mohammed bin Salman on WhatsApp
|
| Not sure whether this is a yet another fake story sponsored by
| the Qataris, who infiltrated the liberal western media with their
| isalmist and ultra left minions all over in the name of
| diversity, since their rift with the Saudis in mid 2017 or the
| richest man on Earth is actually retarded enough to chat with a
| head of state like Saudi Arabia on fucking WhatsApp
| amelius wrote:
| What brand was the phone and OS?
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| It is very odd. Every article I've read recently or when it
| occurred seem to leave this detail out.
| goldcd wrote:
| My gut response to this is "bullshit"
|
| Not based on the Saudi's not buying zero-day-exploits, but on
| them using them from the crown prince's account directly against
| Jeff.
| zelon88 wrote:
| I can see it. The Saudi's control over their own media means
| that their population will likely never find out, and the ones
| that do will support the government anyway. Outside of that the
| rest of the world is in the perfect place to accept whatever
| lies the Saudi's shrug this off with. Authoritarianism is on a
| rise and truth is in decline. Trust in media is probably the
| worst its ever been. Your post proves it. There would be no
| impact on their foreign policy efforts even if it were true.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Bezos is presumably savvy enough not to open a WhatsApp message
| from some random person, and given the Khashoggi situation
| (employed by the WaPo, which Bezos owns) it's not surprising
| he'd be on the Saudi's target list to compromise.
| saberience wrote:
| Let's assume this is how Bezos's phone was hacked for a second,
| does anyone think Trump would do anything about it? Sanction
| Saudia Arabia? Trump didn't lift a finger after the Jamal
| Khashoggi killing and his son-in-law is deep in various business
| dealings with MBS and his goons. Hell, Trump is probably happy
| the Saudis are hacking the phone of his perceived "enemy".
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Doubt he or any other president would do anything about it.
| When was the last time any administration gave the Saudi
| government more than a weak reprimand for their antics? Some of
| our "allies" can do no wrong.
| freedomben wrote:
| What do you want Trump to do?
| jessaustin wrote:
| Is this something a President or anyone in government employ
| should care about? A private citizen using a commercial app on
| a private phone granted that app some permissions he later
| regretted. Why should USA taxpayers care about that?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Will Bezos's divorce affect the Amazon empire in any way?
| Wondering if that personal move will somehow have corporate,
| technological infrastructural, and thus national security
| repercussions.
| victords wrote:
| By that logic, nobody should care about the Khashoggi killing
| as well.
| kshacker wrote:
| Whatsapp allows desktop clients. I use it too. It is technically
| possible for someone to hijack this desktop client and do this
| without MBS's involvement, as long as MBS authorized that
| desktop. I think you need proximity, but you can have a computer
| near the prince, and that computer being remotely controlled by
| someone sitting far away.
|
| Not saying this happened ... but there are many ways to blame it
| on prince and many ways to defend him (and blame a subordinate).
| tasssko wrote:
| Is it that easy to be hacked with WhatsApp?
| rmsaksida wrote:
| Pavel Durov argued that WhatsApp's vulnerabilities are
| intentionally created as part of surveillance programs with
| government agencies. [1]
|
| If that were true, Bezos's case would be an example of how that
| approach to security is double-edged. Backdoors can be just as
| useful to foreign intelligence as they are to whoever pushed for
| their implementation.
|
| [1] https://t.me/durov/109
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| This sounded plausible until I read the first sentence. Why would
| MBS be the one executing the attack, and using his personal
| account to do it?
| caf wrote:
| It seems unlikely it would be MBS himself pressing the button,
| but a reason why Saudi intelligence might use his personal
| account is because Bezos would be far more likely to open a
| video sent from MBS than from some random account.
| mirimir wrote:
| TFA rather implies that MBS is totally full of himself:
|
| > One observer said the alleged targeting of Bezos reflected
| the 'personality-based' environment in which the crown prince
| operates.
|
| So it seems plausible that he and his advisers just assumed
| that they were technical enough to avoid attribution.
|
| It does seem that there's more known than suspicious timing:
|
| > The Guardian understands a forensic analysis of Bezos's
| phone, and the indications that the "hack" began within an
| infected file from the crown prince's account, has been
| reviewed by Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur who
| investigates extrajudicial killings. It is understood that it
| is considered credible enough for investigators to be
| considering a formal approach to Saudi Arabia to ask for an
| explanation.
|
| But then, even if they have conclusive evidence that said
| file is malware, some third party might have compromised MBS'
| account.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| But the obvious thing to do would be to pick _anybody else_
| that Jeff would also talk to and send it from their account
| instead. Only the most incompetent intelligence agency
| imaginable would do an op and intentionally attribute it to
| their own head of state.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Is there reason to believe Bezos regularly corresponds on
| WhatsApp with other Saudis?
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| Why would it have to come from another Saudi?
| [deleted]
| p0rkbelly wrote:
| The Saudi Royal Family simply do not care and walk around with
| impunity. They thumb their nose at the law and the world order
| and think they deserve to do whatever they want. This is
| exactly the same as the Khagoshi execution where overwhelming
| evidence and implication, but, play naive and put on a big sham
| investigation. Just how when Russian agents poisoned the
| Skripals and said they were their to view a church steeple.
| markdown wrote:
| You could be talking about the Trump "Royal Family" and you'd
| still be correct.
| notadoc wrote:
| Presumably because the attacker(s) assumption was that Bezos
| would open a message coming directly from someone he trusted
| and had direct communication with, in this case being MBS?
|
| That brings a lot more questions though; who actually sent the
| message? Was it a man-in-the-middle situation? Was MBS's
| WhatsApp account compromised? Did someone else use MBS physical
| phone to do this? Was it a third party?
|
| Interesting and strange story all around.
| danso wrote:
| > _This analysis found it "highly probable" that the intrusion
| into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from
| the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the
| Washington Post._
|
| Any more information on how this type of attack works? Is it a
| vulnerability in Whatsapp, or was whatsapp just the delivery
| platform?
| heavymark wrote:
| https://www.facebook.com/security/advisories/cve-2019-11931
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| I don't think this is the bug that NSO's tool exploited.
| There are a lot of media parsing vulns that get fixed without
| ever being exploitable.
| nopriorarrests wrote:
| first paragraph: The Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his
| mobile phone "hacked" in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp
| message that had apparently been sent from the personal account
| of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the
| Guardian.
|
| So, not snapchat, but whatsapp. And it's quite surprising for
| me. So, Saudis have 0 days which work on whatsapp on iphone (I
| suppose Bezos uses iphone)? I mean, FB and AAPL, which both can
| afford tens of billions in security research, were pwned by
| saudi 0day? hmmm...
| shyn3 wrote:
| My guess is this gave them the ability to access anything
| WhatsApp could access with a code bug in the application and
| so maybe a Facebook issue more than an Apple issue.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If WhatsApp was given photo library access (which isn't
| unlikely considering you need it to send previously taken
| photos) then the exploit could access _all_ his photos
| without a vulnerability on Apple 's part.
| spzb wrote:
| Wouldn't be that surprising. Zero days are available to the
| highest bidder and Saudi princes have deep pockets.
| nopriorarrests wrote:
| Honest question. Given that RCE's are extremely rare, can't
| FB and AAPL announce 100M USD bounty to get them first and
| patch them, avoiding bad PR and brand impact? Damn, make it
| 200M?! Or bad actors can easily pay 5x more to exploit said
| 0 day on a few targets, so hackers will sell to them
| instead?
| icandoit wrote:
| I would like to see bounties offered no questioned asked
| too.
|
| That way someone on the payroll of nefarious inc. my
| decide to share it with Google or Apple the same time as
| their boss.
| thaeli wrote:
| Brokers ("grey market") usually pay out over time, for
| this reason. If a seller double-dipped by also selling
| the vuln to the vendor via a bounty program, it could get
| fixed before they actually got most of their grey-market
| money.
| nopriorarrests wrote:
| Actually, this is my second question. How much money
| FB/AAPL are ready to pay for a security researcher who
| can find 0 day in their software to work full-time for
| them? Is Nefarius Inc. really competitive with them,
| salary-wise? I just can't grasp the economics here. Back
| in 90's, being a bad guy was probably more lucrative, but
| now, when established IT companies have market cap in
| trillion zone... what makes people work for nefarius inc?
| zulln wrote:
| > what makes people work for nefarius inc?
|
| No idea about nefarius, but when I talked with someone in
| a similar role the answer was work conditions. It was
| apparently easier to get a remote role with a flexible
| schedule at a more "sketchy" company.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > what makes people work for nefarius inc?
|
| Very good pay; the ability to work remotely;
| pride/prestige; community; political reasons.
|
| Being a good digital thief is still very lucrative,
| especially for people living in low income areas with
| relatively lax law enforcement. These people can run
| encrypted computer extortions, steal bitcoin wallets,
| run/sell botnets, fence digital goods, run underground ad
| networks, and consult.
| fooey wrote:
| It's not worth anything like $100m to facebook.
|
| They pay barely enough to say they're willing to pay, but
| they don't really care.
| dickjocke wrote:
| I don't think FB or Apple can win a bidding war with
| state actors, and especially not a wealthy monarch. I
| think the problem is these 0 days are worth more to bad
| actors than the bad press costs companies.
| nopriorarrests wrote:
| >I don't think FB or Apple can win a bidding war with
| state actors, and especially not a wealthy monarch.
|
| Depends on your personal risk profile, I guess. If I was
| a highly professional security researcher (one can
| dream!), the one can find 0 day RCE in whatsapp, well, I
| would happily accept 10-20M bounty from FB and retire for
| life, instead of bargaining with wealthy monarch and
| accepting non-trivial risk of being dismembered with some
| blunt tools in embassy of Turkey or somewhere else.
| danso wrote:
| Thanks, I did make an error and I quickly edited Snapchat to
| Whatsapp, but didn't note it initially since no one had
| replied at that point.
| p1necone wrote:
| Anyone can get pwned by a 0day. Most nation states probably
| have funds to buy a probably exclusive 0day and use it
| against a target.
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