How is something like this even possible?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-bezos-saudi/saudis-gained-access-to-amazon-ceo-bezos-phone-bezos-security-chief-idUSKCN1RB0RS Can anyone just remotely hack into your phone and steal your dick pic?
U.S.
Wow. One of the most terrifying states is having a war with the richest man in the world... what have he done?
Yeah there is tech that is supposed to be available only to the police that fakes being a cellphone tower to acquire your signal and record your traffic. It's all unencrypted, though because it frequency hops it takes some sophisticated tech to intercept. I guess Saudis targeted him by deploying it illegally in the area where he was.
I definitely wouldn’t guess this is how they did it
Well, it's the most plausible way. It's something they can do covertly and the Saudi state certainly has the tech. Illegal to do it in the US but these are the guys who killed Kashoggi so I'm sure they don't care. It's possible they got them some other way but it gets more far fetched. Like they have hacked the mobile network itself, or installed spyware on his phone. But that's harder to pull off. If you have that intercept tech and you're willing to break the law it's easy. Police departments do it all the time, of course with a warrant.
The difficulty of obtaining this technology doesn't compare to the ease of social engineering.
If you read the article you would see that they engaged in the social engineering after they had the texts, and did the social engineering to avoid having to acknowledge the illegal way they first got them
I did read the article, a second time after you replied. I see no mention of social engineering. Maybe we are discussing two different articles.
If you don’t understand how this is done I recommend you spend some time researching information security related to your code. Developers who don’t understand security are a big reason why people find ways to hack into your systems that you build.
Jamal Khashoggi, murdered on the orders of the Saudi Crown Prince, was a Washington Post reporter. Bezos is the owner of the Washington Post. This is why: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/06/read-jamal-khashoggis-columns-for-the-washington-post/ The cases are connected.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okayed-sale-of-pegasus-phone-spying-tool-to-saudi-arabia-report/