A Vanity Fair report says Dutch spies saw Jared Kushner's iPhone screen in 2018, a reminder that even a new, well-reviewed phone can be a target.
Dutch spies were able to watch Jared Kushner's iPhone screen in early 2018, according to a Vanity Fair report. It says they found out after discovering that Russian military hackers had already been capturing screenshots of the phone. The story drew more than 150 points on Hacker News. The claims come from the report and its sources, and the excerpt does not include a response from Kushner.
The report says a Russian operative switched sides and gave Dutch intelligence access to a sensitive server in Rostov, Russia, run by the GRU's hacking team. Inside were screenshots of Kushner's iPhone. The Dutch service, called the MIVD, then tried to work out how the Russians got in. It says the team stopped trying to pick the phone's front door lock and looked for an open window instead.
Kushner had the iPhone X, released in November 2017, with Face ID, a face-scanning lock Apple had promoted as state of the art. By early 2018, the report says, the MIVD found a flaw that gave it access. The access was limited. It could not turn the phone into a microphone or camera. It could capture images of his screen whenever he used the phone.
The report says the screen captures showed Kushner logging in to a UAE bank account that had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan. It alleges that rulers of the UAE and Saudi Arabia put at least $2 billion into at least two accounts for Kushner. One account, at First Abu Dhabi Bank, allegedly received roughly $750 million starting in 2017.
A source quoted in the report said the money was meant to push a diplomatic agenda. These are allegations from the report and its sources. The excerpt does not show documents proving them.
Most people are not targets of national spy services. Still, the lesson is simple. A new phone with strong security can be broken into through a flaw nobody knows about yet. Install software updates when they arrive, since they fix known flaws. Be careful what you open on your phone, and treat banking apps and logins with extra care.
Even a new, well-reviewed phone can be a target, so install updates promptly and be careful what you open, banking included.
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