Jeff Bezos has been in the news lately and its been for all of the wrong reasons. One is the decision to terminate Amazon’s HQ2 in New York City and the fallout that comes from that but that seems to be blowing over. The other is a recent case of alleged extortion from the tabloid National Enquirer involving a tryst with Los Angeles area actress, model, producer and media personality Lauren Sanchez. Somehow the tabloid was able to acquire sensitive pictures of Bezos (and we do mean sensitive) as well as text messages from Bezos, who is married. This recent event can hopefully teach us many things and hopefully people will heed the warnings.
Of course the first is to not cheat on your spouse. It puts you in a compromising situation and can open you up for blackmail. It’s not a good idea but many people do it. It has been the downfall of many prominent people, from politicians to CEOs to small business owners and even regular people. While this can be a moral lesson this is not the lesson that we are trying to point out.
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos of course is the world’s richest man (though he may not be for much longer owing to his divorce) and is the founder and CEO of Amazon, one of the world’s most valuable companies. You know that of course. Cyber security is part of everything that they do, and outside of a major data breach that occurred before Black Friday of 2018, they have managed to avoid the fate that has befallen several other large corporations. That said everything that Bezos has should be secure. His personal devices like his phone one would figure would be about as close to unhackable as possible right?
Shouldn’t Bezos Have Access to the Best of the Best?
Of course we know that nothing is unhackable but Bezos should have security protected by more security protected by the best firewall that money can buy. He should have access to the best technology on the market and one would figure technology that is not available to the average person as well. So just how did he get hacked and have his personal baggage exposed and end up in the hands of a tabloid newspaper.
Bezos Was Stupid but He Wasn’t Hacked
The problem is that Bezos probably wasn’t actually hacked. He had sent the images to Sanchez and it appears that the images were taken from her end. Bezos hired a security expert following the Enquirer’s blackmail attempt and it is believed that the most likely scenario was that Sanchez shared the images with someone who then took them for their own gain.
What May Have Happened
There are two probable scenarios put forth. The first is that Sanchez did not intend to share them with anyone but did not realize that the permissions for the folder that they were in allowed them to be shared. The investigator believed that Sanchez’s brother Michael, who is apparently a supporter of Donald Trump and acquaintance of embattled Trump associate Roger Stone, saw the images inadvertently and decided to use them to embarrass Bezos. With Bezos being a frequent critic of Trump and the owner of the anti-Trump Washington Post this scenario certainly makes sense.
The other is that Sanchez herself shared the images intentionally in an attempt to accelerate the end of Bezos’ marriage so that she could marry him and become the wife of the world’s richest man. Unfortunately this scenario also make sense.
Considering it was revealed that Michael Sanchez, who has been a longtime source for the Enquirer, was paid $200,000 for the texts according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Daily Beast, it seems the former is likely what happened.
Check Your Sharing Permissions!
The lesson that we all can take out of this is that our cyber security is only as good as our weakest link and that weakest link is always a flesh and blood human. This is not a new concept. Think about it this way: Bezos was dumb enough to send compromising images of himself to someone else. Sanchez may have inadvertently (or intentionally) shared the images with someone else. She may very well have thought that they were secure but did not set the correct permissions on it. Remove human emotion and stupidity from the picture and nothing bad happens.
Sharing documents online has become the norm. We do it here at Nicely Done Sites and chances are you do it as well at your business. When a document is created or shared is it being shared with only the people who need to see it? It is quite possible, if not probable, that no, there are people who have access to it that do not need access to it. One of those people may have an axe to grind with you like an old employee that has not had their account removed yet. For all you know someone may be saving that document and put it in a folder that gives others access to it.
Your sharing permissions are an important and yet often overlooked part of your cyber security. In this case it may have cost the world’s richest man millions of dollars, his marriage and some of his good reputation. He may have the power and wealth to overcome this but not everyone will be so fortunate. So just remember, make sure anything that you share is shared with only the people that you want to share it with and also make sure that you trust that individual. A mistake on their part could damage your business or your reputation.