14 DAY TRIAL // The hacked iPhone X belonging to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos keeps making the headlines, this time following a statement coming from none other than Facebook's Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg.
Clegg discussed the hack in an interview with the BBC, explaining that WhatsApp isn’t the one to blame for the breach, but Apple itself.
According to an analysis of the attack, Bezos’ phone was hacked after he received a 4.4MB malware-infected video file on WhatsApp. After the video was launched, malicious actors extracted gigabytes of data from his phone, including personal information.
“Unhackable encryption”
The Facebook executive defended WhatsApp, explaining that the service uses end-to-end encryption that’s currently unhackable.
“We're as sure as you can be that the technology of end-to-end encryption cannot be hacked into,” he said, adding that he is “very, very confident” the hack wasn’t powered by a video shared on WhatsApp.
“It sounds like something on the, you know, what they call the operate, operated on the phone itself,” Clegg continued. “It can’t have been anything on the, when the message was sent, in transit, because that’s end-to-end encrypted on WhatsApp.”
The Facebook official insisted that what he described as “something” actually affected iOS, the operating system powering the hacked iPhone, and this is how the hackers managed to obtain access to the data stored on the device.
“It only comes to life when you open it,” Clegg said referring to the malware sent to devices.
Oddly enough, while the Facebook executive claims end-to-end encryption can’t be bypassed, WhatsApp sued Israeli-based NSO Group last year for building malware that was used by malicious actors to break into accounts of high-profile users, including journalists and government officials.
Apple hasn’t yet responded to Facebook’s claims, but expect the Cupertino-based tech giant to obviously defend the iPhone security.