Cairo (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia on Wednesday called the media reports as “absurd” about the hacking of Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos’ phone, and called for an investigation so that all facts are out.
UK-based Guardian newspaper claimed that the billionaire’s phone was hacked in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had been sent from the personal account of Saudi’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The report alleged that the encrypted message from the number used by the crown prince had a malicious file that infiltrated Bezos’ phone to extract large amounts of data within hours.
“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”, Saudi’s U.S. embassy tweeted.
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.
— Saudi Embassy (@SaudiEmbassyUSA) January 22, 2020
However, Amazon flatly declined to comment on the matter.
Bezos’ security chief said without citing any proof that at the time that Saudi had access to his phone and gained private information from it involving text messages between him and a former television anchor, who the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper said Bezos was dating.
Saudi had said it had nothing to do with the reporting.
