Jeff Bezos’s mobile phone was reportedly hacked following an exchange between the Amazon chief executive officer and Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman on encrypted messaging service WhatsApp.

While a message from the prince to Bezos in mid-2018 that preceded the hack appeared benign, investigators found digital evidence suggesting it contained code that ultimately led to the breach of the billionaire’s phone, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the probe isn’t public. A forensic analysis showed with moderately high confidence that a WhatsApp account used by bin Salman was involved, another person said.

The Guardian newspaper reported earlier Tuesday that an analysis had found that the theft of data from Bezos’s phone in 2018 started with an infected video file sent from bin Salman’s personal account.

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 inappropriate relationship between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, a former television anchor.

Gavin de Becker, a security consultant for Bezos, later said he believed the Saudi Arabian government had accessed Bezos’s phone before the Enquirer exposed the relationship. He didn’t provide any direct evidence to back up his claims, which he said came from “our investigators and several experts.” De Becker cited the Enquirer’s business relationship with the Saudis, as well as tough coverage of the murder of a critic of the Saudi regime by the Bezos-owned Washington Post, as reasons why bin Salman might seek to harm the Amazon founder. The newspaper reported last year that the Central Intelligence Agency linked the crown prince to the 2018 murder of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Saudi embassy, in a tweet, attacked the reports as “absurd” and called for an investigation “so that we can have all the facts out.”

A United Nations investigation to be released Wednesday is expected to confirm that Bezos’s mobile phone was hacked in a WhatsApp message from bin Salman, the Washington Post reported late Tuesday.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)