NSA faces questions over security of Trump officials after alleged Bezos hack

Democratic lawmaker asks agency if it is confident the Saudi government has not sought to hack US officials

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
@skirchy
Mon 27 Jan 2020 09.34 GMT
Last modified on Mon 27 Jan 2020 09.57 GMT

The US National Security Agency is facing questions about the security of top Trump administration officials’ communications following last week’s allegations that the Saudi crown prince may have had a hand in the alleged hack of Jeff Bezos.

Ron Wyden, a senior Democratic lawmaker, asked the director of the NSA whether he was confident that the Saudi government had not also sought to hack senior US government officials, including the White House adviser Jared Kushner, who has reportedly had a WhatsApp relationship with the Saudi heir.

Wyden pointed to the resignation in October 2019 of Dimitrios Vastakis, who headed network defence at the White House before his departure, and reportedly said that the White House was acting in a way likely to lead to its being electronically compromised.

“It is no secret that foreign intelligence services target senior US government officials and seek to compromise their professional accounts and devices as well as their personal ones,” Wyden said.

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