Questions linger over investigation into Jeff Bezos' hacking

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Cybersecurity experts said Thursday there were still many unanswered questions from an investigation commissioned by Jeff Bezos that concluded the billionaire's cellphone was hacked, apparently after receiving a video file with malicious spyware from the WhatsApp account of Saudi Arabia's crown prince.

The experts said the evidence in the privately commissioned report does not show with certainty that Bezos' phone was actually hacked, much less how it was compromised or what kind of malware was used.

The report on the investigation, which was managed by FTI Consulting and overseen by Anthony Ferrante, a former head of the FBI's Cyber Division, was made public Wednesday.

In it, investigators said a digital forensic review concluded with “medium to high confidence” that Bezos' phone was compromised via malware sent from a WhatsApp account used by Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Two U.N. experts issued their own take on the report's findings, calling on the U.S. to investigate further. They said it appeared the Amazon founder may have been targeted because of his ownership of The Washington Post, which was publishing reports critical of the crown prince by columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents inside the kingdom's consulate in Turkey in October 2018, five months after Bezos' phone was apparently hacked.

The report's conclusions drew heavily from the unusually high volume of data that left Bezos' iPhone X within 24 hours of receiving the video file from Prince Mohammed's WhatsApp account on May 1, 2018, a month after the two exchanged phone numbers. The size of the file, the investigators suggested, indicated a malware payload may have been included.

The investigators said Bezos' phone began...