Jeff Bezos (shutterstock) Mohammed bin Salman (Flickr)
According to a new report from The Guardian, billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's cellphone was hacked in 2018 after he received a WhatsApp message that apparently originated from the personal account of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Guardian reports that an encrypted message sent "from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman" possibly contained a malicious file that "infiltrated" Bezos's phone. The message was sent after the two men were reportedly having a "seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange" when the unsolicited file was sent on May 1 of that year.
While large amounts of data were extracted from Bezos's phone as a result of the attack, The Guardian does not know the nature of the data extracted or how it was used.
The government of Saudi Arabia has been implicated in the targeted killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October of the same year the malicious file was sent. Bezos is the owner of the Washington Post.
Read the full report over at The Guardian.
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