Marczak said, once inside my phone, the attacker apparently deleted traces of the first hack. The attack came via an Arabic-language WhatsApp message that invited me by name to a protest at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.īill Marczak, a senior fellow at Citizen Lab, said there was no sign that either attempt had succeeded since I had not clicked on the links in those messages.īut he also found that I had been hacked twice, in 20, with so-called “zero-click” exploits, which allowed the hacker to get inside my phone without my clicking on any links.
This year, a member of The Times’s tech security team found another hacking attempt from 2018 on my phone. Technology researchers later identified it as an attempt to hack his phone, likely by Saudi Arabia. I take many precautions to protect these sources because if they were caught they could end up in jail, or dead.īut in a world where we store so much of our personal and professional lives in the devices we carry in our pockets, and where surveillance software continues to become ever more sophisticated, we are all increasingly vulnerable.Ī screen shot from Ben Hubbard's phone of a WhatsApp message from June 2018 inviting him to a protest at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. So perhaps I should not have been surprised when I learned recently that I, too, had been hacked.Īs a New York Times correspondent who covers the Middle East, I often speak to people who take great risks to share information that their authoritarian rulers want to keep secret.
The ruler of Dubai hacked the phones of his ex-wife and her lawyers.
Saudi Arabia has broken into the phones of dissidents at home and abroad, sending some to prison. Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.īEIRUT, Lebanon - In Mexico, the government hacked the cellphones of journalists and activists.
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