Amazon owner Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone hacked in 2018 through a WhatsApp message reportedly sent by the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia several months before the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A digital forensic analysis found that the encrypted message from Mohammed bin Salman's number is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated Bezos's phone.
It is "highly probable" that the intrusion was triggered by an infected video file sent from Salman's phone to Bezos, according to the report. The crown prince and the billionaire were reportedly having what seemed like a friendly conversation on WhatsApp when the file was sent on May 1 of 2018. Large amounts of data were taken from Bezos's phone within a matter of hours, according to a person familiar with the matter, but it is unknown what exactly was taken from the phone or how it was used.
The revelation of new details about a security breach that affected the world's richest man comes about a year after the surprise announcement that Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, would divorce after 25 years of marriage. The National Enquirer subsequently disclosed an extramarital affair between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, a former television anchor, in a series of reports that relied, in part, on intimate text messages sent by Bezos. The Amazon Chief subsequently published a blog post accusing the tabloid of threatening to publish more embarrassing text messages and photos unless he publicly affirmed that there was no political motivation or outside force behind the tabloid's coverage.