Until now, Facebook had kept its quiet about the Bezos case. However, recently, the social media giant has attempted to put the blame on Bezos’ iPhone.
For those who don’t know, Amazon’s CEO’s phone was allegedly hacked by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman when he sent a malware-laden video to the former.
Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, while in dialogue with Bloomberg said that the social media giant was taking all the allegations seriously, however, the company is still looking into the matter and refuses to “comment on any individual story.” She also said:
One of the things that it highlights is actually some of the potential underlying vulnerabilities that exist on the actual operating systems on phones. From a WhatsApp perspective, from a Facebook perspective, the thing that we care about the most, the thing that we invest in is making sure that the information that people have with us is safe and secure.
The victim was using an iPhone X which means the operating system was a version of iOS. In this case, Mendelsohn has a valid point. Bezos received the video file from a number that he knew belonged to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Due to the default settings in WhatsApp, the video was automatically downloaded. Users can opt-out of this feature to protect themselves from similar malware.
This case is a humble reminder of how none of the apps are free from security threats. It’s easy to dismiss this maze of revelations involving Bezos and MBS as just another high-profile hack. However, this hacking happened within WhatsApp; if it happened to Bezos, it could happen to anyone else.