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(CNN) - The special rapporteurs of United Nations special Human Rights procedures are "seriously concerned" about the information they have received on a WhatsApp account that belongs to the crown prince of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the chief executive of Amazon, Jeff Bezos.
The report states:
“UN human rights experts are very concerned about the information they have received that suggests that, in contravention of fundamental international human rights standards, a WhatsApp account belonging to the crown prince of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2018 deployed software spy that allowing the surveillance of the owner of The Washington Post and CEO of Amazon, Jeffery Bezos. ”
Independent experts (Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on summary and extrajudicial executions, and David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression) say the following:
“The information we have received suggests the possible involvement of the crown prince in Mr. Bezos's vigilance, in an effort to influence, if not silence, the Washington Post reports on Saudi Arabia. The accusations reinforce other reports that point to a pattern of selective surveillance of perceived opponents and those of broader strategic importance to Saudi authorities, including nationals and non-nationals. These accusations are also relevant for the ongoing evaluation of claims about the involvement of the crown prince in the 2018 assassination of the Saudi journalist and the Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi.
“The alleged hacking of Mr. Bezos's phone and others requires an immediate investigation by the United States and other relevant authorities, including the investigation of the continuous, multi-year, direct and personal involvement of the crown prince in efforts to attack opponents
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“This informed surveillance of Mr. Bezos, allegedly through software developed and marketed by a private company and transferred to a government without judicial control of its use, is, if true, a concrete example of the damages resulting from marketing Unrestricted, sale and use of spyware. Surveillance through digital media should be subject to the most rigorous control, including by judicial authorities and national and international export control regimes, to protect against the ease of abuse. Underlines the pressing need for a moratorium on the sale and global transfer of private surveillance technology.
"The circumstances and timing of Bezos' piracy and surveillance also strengthen support for US authorities and other relevant authorities to further investigate allegations that the crown prince ordered, incited or, at least, was aware of the planning. but failed to stop the mission that fatally attacked Mr. Khashoggi in Istanbul. At a time when Saudi Arabia was supposedly investigating the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, and prosecuting those he considered responsible, he was secretly conducting a massive online campaign against Mr. Bezos and Amazon, the main objective of being the owner of the Washington Post. "
The two experts, who were appointed by the Human Rights Council, recently learned of a 2019 forensic analysis of Mr. Bezos' iPhone that evaluated with “medium to high confidence” that his phone was infiltrated on May 1, 2018 to through an MP4 video file sent from a WhatsApp account personally used by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
According to the analysis, the crown prince and Mr. Bezos exchanged phone numbers / WhatsApp the month before the alleged infiltration. The forensic analysis found that within a few hours of receiving the MP4 video file from the crown prince's account, mass exfiltration and (for Bezos's phone) began data from the phone, suddenly increasing the data output by 29,156 percent at 126 MB. The data increase continued undetected for a few months and at rates of up to 106,032,045 percent (4.6 GB) higher than the pre-video data output baseline for Mr. Bezos's phone, which was of 430KB.
The forensic analysis assessed that the intrusion was probably carried out through the use of an important spyware product identified in other cases of Saudi surveillance, such as the NSO Group Pegasus-3 malware, a widely reported product that was purchased and implemented by Saudi officials This would be consistent with other information. For example, the use of WhatsApp as a platform to allow the installation of Pegasus on devices has been well documented and is the subject of a lawsuit by Facebook / WhatsApp against NSO Group.
The accusations are also reinforced by other evidence of Saudi attacks against dissidents and perceived opponents. For example, the United States has filed criminal proceedings against two Twitter employees and a Saudi citizen “for their respective roles in accessing private information in the accounts of certain Twitter users and in providing that information to officials in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia” . The three individuals are accused of being illegal agents for Saudi Arabia who, according to US prosecutors, dedicated themselves to "attacking and obtaining private data from known dissenters and critics, under the direction and control of the Saudi Arabian government."
Special rapporteurs point out that the accusations about the hacking of Bezos's mobile phone are also consistent with the widespread role of the Crown Prince in leading a campaign against dissidents and political opponents. Mr. Bezos's phone hacking occurred during a period, May-June 2018, in which the phones of two close partners of Jamal Khashoggi, Yahya Assiri and Omar Abdulaziz, were also intercepted, allegedly using Pegasus malware.
At the time of the alleged hacking in May 2018 of Mr. Bezos's phone, Jamal Khashoggi was a prominent columnist for The Washington Post, whose writing increasingly raised concerns about the rule of the crown prince. On October 2, 2018, Saudi government officials murdered Mr. Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The Post quickly began substantial coverage of the disappearance and murder investigation, expanding to inform a number of aspects related to the rule of the crown prince in Saudi Arabia.
According to the forensic analysis, after the interception of Mr. Bezos's phone, the crown prince sent WhatsApp messages to Mr. Bezos, in November 2018 and February 2019, in which he allegedly disclosed private and confidential information about personal life from Mr. Bezos that was not available to public sources. During the same period, Mr. Bezos was widely attacked in Saudi social networks as an alleged adversary of the kingdom.
This was part of a massive and clandestine online campaign against Bezos and Amazon, apparently directed primarily at him as the owner of The Washington Post. UN experts also point out that Mr. Saud al-Qahtani, appointed by the Saudi prosecutor as incitement of Mr. Khashoggi's abduction, was also repeatedly linked to the organization of the online campaign that excited the Post and called for boycotting Mr. Bezos and his companies.
The annexes to this statement provide details about the expert forensic analysis of Mr. Bezos' device that took place in 2019.
The Special Rapporteurs hope to continue their investigations into the responsibility for the murder of Mr. Khashoggi and the increasingly important role of the surveillance industry by allowing the inexplicable use of spyware to intimidate journalists, human rights defenders and property owners. media.
Saudi Arabia denies that Jeff Bezos's telephone intervened
Saudi Arabia denied Tuesday that it was responsible for the attack after a media report implicated the crown prince.
The Saudi embassy in Washington said in a statement posted online that "recent media reports suggesting that the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos' phone are absurd."
"We request an investigation into these claims so that we can have all the facts," the embassy added.
The digital forensic analysis concluded that the phone was compromised after Bezos received a malicious video file of a phone number used by bin Salman, according to the source who spoke with CNN.
The Guardian newspaper, citing anonymous sources, was the first to report this on Tuesday.
The newspaper said "large amounts of data" were extracted from Bezos' phone within hours.
Amazon declined to comment on it when contacted by CNN Business.
Bezos suggested in an online publication published in February 2019 that he had become an enemy of Saudi Arabia due to the Washington Post's coverage of the murder.
The executive president also suggested that the attack was part of a plan that allowed the National Enquirer, an American tabloid, to gain access to private texts that he exchanged with a woman named Lauren Sánchez, with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
A spokesman for the National Enquirer editor said earlier: "American Media does not have, nor has had, any editorial or financial link with Saudi Arabia."
An attorney for American Media chief executive David Pecker, Elkan Abramowitz, said in February that the source of the tabloid story "was not Saudi Arabia."
Gavin de Becker, a security consultant working for Bezos, also suggested that Saudi Arabia played a role in the attack on the executive president's phone. "Our researchers and several experts concluded with great confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos's phone and obtained private information," de Becker wrote in an opinion article published by Daily Beast in March 2019.
Saudi Arabia sentenced five people to death for the murder of Khashoggi in December, but acquitted a former senior advisor to bin Salman, a result that was described by UN special rapporteur Agnes Callamard as "anything but justice." The United Nations expert previously found "sufficient credible evidence" asking that the Saudi crown prince be investigated.
Jeff Bezos Mohammed bin Salman
