It appeared that there was credible evidence that a hack on Bezos' phone originated from a message sent to him by Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in May of 2018. The incident involved Amazon boss Jeff Bezos (the world's richest man), and a Saudi Crown Prince (also reasonably well-off). While online scams are nothing new, this case differed from the rest, given the high profile cast list. Reports of this extraordinary alleged hack first circulated in January 2020. It could also be used to extract personal or financial data, or use your device to infect further phones, including your friends and family.īezos, WhatsApp and the Saudi Prince Explained This type of virus threatens to delete data or render the phone useless, unless a payment is made. While few of us are of interest enough to make the front page of a national newspaper with any data gleaned from our phone, a virus could very well be used to install ransomware. Once a virus has hold of your device, the result can be devastating. The company issued a patch shortly afterwards that fixed the issue. This would occur whether or not the user had answered the original call. In May of last year, it was revealed that a bug in the app made it possible to access a user's phone for surveillance, utilising the audio call feature. Nefarious third party apps like these tend not to be available through official channels, and are easily caught with anti-virus software. Another virus, Agent Smith, replaces the WhatsApp app on your phone with a malicious version, but again, this isn't an infected file distributed through WhatsApp itself. These include WhatsApp Gold, which was pitched as a “premium” version of WhatsApp, but it was nothing more than a malicious third party app designed to steal your data. While there have been cases of WhatsApp “hacking” in the news, these tend to be related to apps that masquerade as the popular messaging service. Last year the University of Cambridge discovered that 87% of Android phones are exposed to at least one critical vulnerability. Still, examples of viruses being released through the platform are relatively rare, even if smartphone viruses are becoming more common.
It's long been thought that phones can't contract the kind of viruses that affect PCs, but no system in infallible, and that includes Android, iOS, and the Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
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