The title does not match the article at all. He didn’t find anything. He found that Saudis don’t like Bezos and that they hack phones. It’s quite a stretch to go from that to saying they hacked the Bezos phone.
>Further, to respect officials pursuing this case, I won’t disclose details from our investigation. I am, however, comfortable confirming one key fact:
>Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information. As of today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details.
He claims there is direct evidence that they accessed Bezos' phone. It may not be true, but opting to not disclose evidence doesn't mean none exists. I also doubt Bezos and his lawyer would make such a major accusation like that without confidence that it's true.
This is really no better than citing anonymous sources. There is a story if and when, and not a moment before, actual evidence (with some respectably chain of custody) is actually provided.
EDIT: The word "evidence" only appears once in the editorial, talking about an AP article reporting that the Saudi's were sent an advanced digital copy of the pro-MBS magazine.
Read it carefully, Gavin never equivocally states he has any evidence that the Saudi's had access to Jeff's texts. They interviewed people. They were told by other people that the Saudi's had this capability. SA apparently "unleashed their cyber-army on Bezos". And AMI has done [presumably highly lucrative] work for MBS. And AMI is bad because they caught-and-killed a story for Trump, and have done things for Trump in the past. That is all we get here, aside from the ominous ending of Saudi Arabia controlling our media.
I'm just so tired of the conspiracy theories.
Not knowing why AMI started talking to Michael Sanchez is not the same as knowing that the Saudi's told them to talk to Sanchez.
I'm not on the hook to prove anything. TFA provides literally zero evidence of their claim other than to assert it strongly.
In my opinion, the most strongly asserted claims accompanied by "we can't tell you the evidence, but we turned it over to someone else who also can't tell you"... well, haven't we seen how that turns out enough already over the last 2 years?
My point is simply that TFA asserts a lot and backs it up with nothing but hyperbole.
My point was simply that this is a mealy-mouthed statement which does not assert anything about what, if any, evidence may have been obtained or analyzed;
> "Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information."
What incentives do de Becker and Bezos have that would cause them to falsely accuse the government of Saudi Arabia? It seems that such an action would be risky to say the least.
Of course, the potential risk doesn't mean that they don't have such reasons (or even that their inference based on whatever data they have is correct), but I am curious as to what you think are the likely explanations.
It seemed the implied incentive for Bezos to accuse the Saudis was to portray himself as the victim and not the victimizer. He also had beef with the Saudis before this happened. Finally, his medium posts and frantic behavior suggested he may have been letting panic and paranoia get the better of him.
BTW, not saying that I think any of this is true (and this article suggests it isn't). Just summarizing what others have suggested.
But the incentives are massive. The world’s richest man had a huge PR problem with stories coming out about how his wife actually was instrumental in helping build Amazon in the early days.
Half his fortune on the line. Perhaps his controlling stake in Amazon, too? How many Amazon shares will his ex-wife walk away with at the end of this? Aside from the divorce which will be the most damaging event in Jeff’s life, the PR hit is not insignificant.
If Jeff can tie AMI to illegal spying he can possibly take down the entire company. Is revenge not a good enough motive? He is certainly not a disinterested third party.
This is a great albatross to distract from an otherwise big story.
I never said outlandish. I said people claiming Gavin said he had evidence were incorrect, because TFA literally never claims to have evidence. Let alone direct evidence. Let alone incontrovertible evidence.
I think it’s absolutely incumbent on the accuser to provide at least some general description of the form and substance of evidence that was obtained to support a claim such as this. This is not asking too much from a private citizen who apparently had unlimited funds from his boss (the richest man in the world) to exact revenge on someone who attacked him in one of the most financially damaging ways imaginable.
Since when does HN accept conspiracy theories with absolutely nothing to back them up? I’ve seen the post “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” upvoted to the top of many discussions. Why does that not apply here? Doubly so in a case where the accuser is so personally vested in the outcome.
You propose that because we know conspiracy A (through tremendous amounts of actual evidence) so therefore we must entertain a tenuously related conspiracy theory B without any evidence?
Please don’t accuse me of being insulting and dishonest on the basis of frankly basic skepticism of a conspiracy theory, particularly if that is the extent of your rebuttal.
The political skirmishes of the worlds richest men don’t really concern me. What does concern me is the posited existence of a remotely installable no-touch root access zero day for a presumably up-to-date iPhone, and secondarily, that it’s being weaponized by foreign government against private US citizens — meaning it apparently doesn’t require the carrier’s cooperation to deploy, which is what would shock me the most, because baseband exploit would be the most obvious vector.
> "absolutely nothing to back [..] up [the theory]"
More intellectual dishonesty. The Saudis had the means, the motive, the opportunity and the disposition, as demonstrated by their murderous tendencies. The House of Saud are a family of thugs who are known to conspire to murder journalists. It's entirely rational to consider the strong probability that they've also conspired to blackmail people.
- A remote access no-hands zero day iPhone rootkit.
- An international plot to expose an affair
- A plot potentially involving the President of the United States in cahoots with the National Enquirer to expose the richest man in the world
- A blackmail attempt to cover it all up
- Perfectly executed parallel construction to account for the source of the photos
Last week the President was accused of clandestinely exploiting the intelligence apparatus of the United States to steal Bezos' photos. Now that we know (the only actual evidence that we've seen -- in this case statements from the brother himself and AMI) that the photos were provided by the brother, a new theory emerges that this was merely parallel construction after the affair was exposed through spying by the Saudis.
To reach that conclusion, you would have to (1) have evidence that the Saudi's contacted AMI to give them the lead, (2) have evidence of the zero-day on the iPhone, and (3) be able to link some sort of network activity back to Saudi Arabia carrying the exfiltrated data. ('AMI was tipped off', 'by the Saudi's, 'after they spied on Bezos by exploiting his phone' are three separate facts which each need supporting evidence).
Instead... You use the words "means", "motive", "opportunity" in a colloquial which is at odds with their meaning in a court of law. "I think this guy doesn't like that guy" is true of an untold number of people in Bezos' orbit, including his ex-wife.
"I think this guy can remote root international iPhones at the click of a mouse" is not means" - it's utter speculation. Anyone* who knew Bezos was having an affair with Sanchez would be in the exact same position to approach the brother and ask for kompromat.
I don't know what you are claiming is the evidence of "opportunity" in this case?
I certainly don't support Saudi Arabia, and I'm looking forward to the day where there's no one left to buy their oil and they sink back into the desert. It is absolute fact that Saudi Arabia has murdered and blackmailed in pursuit of their political goals.
But you have literally nothing but a cute story and a blog post of a guy who said trust me because I have high confidence that they hacked Bezos' phone to give AMI the lead on his affair other than "Saudi Arabia bad".
You have not come even remotely close to substantiating any sort of claim, other than to basically say that it's not impossible that it was them. I actually agree that it's not impossible that agents of Saudi Arabia remotely accessed Bezos' iPhone using a no-hands zero day to root his iPhone, discover the affair, and then call someone at AMI to tell them to track down the girl's brother to get a copy of the texts. It's not impossible but there's also no evidence that any of us has seen it actually happened. I think that's pretty much the definition of a conspiracy theory right there! The correct response, IMO, is absolute skepticism, and to wait for evidence to be presented.
Or at the very least, a general description of the sort of evidence which allegedly has been found?
And I really think you should cut it out with the ad hominem. There's nothing dishonest about my skepticism, and I am not insulting you, just your utter lack of an cohesive argument.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/bezos-saudi-hacking-allegati...
So many downvotes to my comments on this story, I am curious to see where it all ends up.
> As has been reported elsewhere, my results have been turned over to federal officials. ... Further, to respect officials pursuing this case, I won’t disclose details from our investigation.
"Results". "Details". Never "evidence".
Gavin said he was confident in his conclusion. He then went on to describe numerous activities; interviewing current and former AMI executives, Middle East experts, cybersecurity experts, current and former advisers to Trump (?), whistleblowers, associates, and others targeted by the Saudis.
That sounds to me, like an awful lot of smoke, and zero definitive evidence. What he didn't say he had? Forensic evidence from the phone. DKIM signed email trail, confession from a co-conspirator, etc.
I have no doubt there is a compelling story here. I have no doubt that this could theoretically fit the Saudi MO. I certainly have absolutely zero doubt that the crown prince is an epicly murderous duplicitous asshole. I might even believe the Saudis have some ways to remotely infiltrate certain iPhones (but I would bet it requires compromising the carrier).
None of that would lead me to conclude the Saudis tipped AMI without just a little bit of non-circumstantial evidence.