Saudi Crown Prince hacked Jeff Bezos' phone: Reports

Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman hacked the phone of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, multiple reports claimed on Wednesday. According to a The Guardian, the phone was hacked during a WhatsApp exchange between the duo in May 2018. Apparently, during a conversation, an infected attachment was sent to Bezos' phone, which extracted large amounts of data. Analysis showed that the message originated from Salman's phone, the publication reported. THE WEEK cannot independently vouch for the veracity of the reports. The reports quoted anonymous sources, as the probe cannot yet be made public.

However, the Saudi embassy denied all the allegations. "Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos' phone are absurd. We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out," the embassy tweeted. 

The Guardian wrote: The disclosure is likely to raise difficult questions for the kingdom about the circumstances around how US tabloid The National Enquirer came to publish intimate details about Bezos’s private life—including text messages—nine months later. 

The Enquirer had accessed the text messages, and in January 2019 reported that Bezos had an extramarital affair with former news anchor and entertainment reporter Lauren Sanchez—a leak that led to his divorce. In February, Bezos accused the tabloid's publisher American Media Inc—led by David Pecker, who has been described as a close friend of Bezos critic President Donald Trump—of trying to blackmail him over lurid photos.

Bezos had hinted he may have been targeted by pro-Trump forces in part because of coverage by The Washington Post, which he owns, of the murder of its contributor Jamal Khashoggi, strangled and dismembered by Saudi agents in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate in October.

-Inputs from AFP via PTI