I don't understand, isn't a government entity someone who can get the texts off his mistress' phone?

I think the point is that it doesn't require the power of a government agency to get anybody's images off their phone.

It could be a government, it it could be Bezos' wife, Sanchez's brother or ex husband, or just someone with a knack for social engineering who thought there was a lot of money to be made.

Could it also be someone with a stringray who intercepted Jeff's correspondence to and from Sanchez?

I suppose it could have been -- depending on the phones involved. MMS isn't encrypted AFAIK, but iMessage is.

If you want exotic explanations, the images could have been recovered by Van Eck phreaking too, I suppose.

More likely explanation is something like the geek squad scandal where someone with physical access to the device (e.g. cell phone repairman, personal assistant, hotel maid) copied the photos.

So now it comes out that Sanchez shared some photos (no mention of which) of her and Bezos with female friends, and some SFW photos with her brother. Additionally she backed up her phone to her computer, and her computer was backed up to her assistant's computer. It looks like a lot of people might have had access to the photos.

- '

Nobody said they've used sophisticated attacks to get their hands into that data, though.

Why would a Government agency risk burning a zero day if they can just pay that lady or blackmail her with something else?

>>> "Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked"

Hacking implies a sophisticated attack.

Not saying either government didn't do it. Following paxys line of thought I would however agree that hacking is not the most likely explanation in how the private data was taken.

Social engineering is sometimes also described as an "hack" but I doubt that is what Bezos implies with the word.

> Hacking implies a sophisticated attack.

Depends on the audience I guess. The big majority of hacks are not sophisticated at all. There's also so many people that use it without an implication on the grade of sophistication.

But one thing is true, we can't possibly know for certain his intentions by using that word :-) so these are just our opinions for now :-)

> Hacking implies a sophisticated attack

to you and me, yes. probably also to Jeff Bezos. but to the general public (arguably the real audience here), hacking is anything between guessing someones weak password and sophisticated attacks like stuxnet.

Or they just wait until she leaves her phone unattended and clone it

This is harder than it seems nowadays (especially if you actually want to read the data you cloned later).

As an example: consider the FBI pushing Apple to help them decrypt a terrorists phone from several years ago. They finally got in because the phone was a particularly old model without a secure enclave and (from memory) they ended up buying a 0day for a considerable sum to do it.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/538/

If you select for all instances of phone hacking and then split it into two parts:

1. Government hacked

2. Not government hacked

I'd wager that count(2) is by far the largest. Sure governments do it, but they literally don't have nearly as much human-attention and interest available as the rest of the entire human race.

This has been the rumor, but as yet unsubstantiated.

People like sharing salacious things with their besties, man or woman.