There's a good chance Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and venture capitalist Peter Thiel are having their phones examined right about now, in the wake of new reports about the hacking of Jeff Bezos' phone.

A forensic analysis commissioned by Bezos suggests that it's likely his phone was hacked in May 2018 via a file sent from a WhatsApp account used by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to reports in The Guardian and the Financial Times.

The hacking attack came just weeks after Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, met in person with bin Salman during the latter's tour of Silicon Valley and the US. The two swapped phone numbers during a dinner meeting and later connected via WhatsApp.

But Bezos wasn't the only tech luminary or celebrity who met with bin Salman on his three-week tour. So too did Cook, Page, Brin, Thiel and plenty of others. There is no evidence that their phones were also compromised, but given the stunning allegations about how Bezos' phone was hacked, it's not unreasonable to wonder whether others may have swapped phone numbers with the crown prince and could be at risk.

The Saudi US embassy called the allegations of hacking "absurd" in a tweet on Tuesday.

Here are some of the tech executives and other notable figures who met with the Saudi crown prince on his 2018 trip, according to The New York Times:

The Guardian published a bombshell report on Tuesday: That Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone was hacked by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

According to the report, a WhatsApp message that Bezos received from bin Salman's phone number in May 2019 is believed to have included a "malicious file" that compromised the Amazon CEO's phone. Bezos and the crown prince had previously exchanged a few friendly messages on WhatsApp, according to the report. But within hours of receiving a video file in May, Bezos' phone began to surreptitiously transmit large amounts of data. 

Months later, Saudi Arabia was accused of the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a high-profile Saudi critic and columnist for the Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos. 

And in January 2019, Bezos' affair with TV anchor Lauren Sanchez was reported by the National Enquirer, and intimate selfies and text messages that Bezos had sent Sanchez were leaked. 

The Saudi US embassy called the allegations of hacking "absurd" in a tweet on Tuesday.

The report of the hacking by the Saudi Kingdom's crown prince would seem to fill in a lot of the missing pieces to this puzzle of intrigue and deception. But there are still a lot of things we don't know. Here are some of the top unanswered questions:

What data from Bezos' phone was accessed in the hack?  

The nature of the data taken from Bezos' phone remains unknown to the UN investigators looking into the hacking, according to the Guardian's report. A subsequent report from the Financial Times citing sources from Bezos's own investigation into the matter suggests that the breach was substantial, allowing hackers to access "dozens of gigabytes."

Is Saudi Arabia behind the leaks of Bezos' intimate selfies to his lover?

Whether the Amazon CEO's private photos and texts were leaked to the National Enquirer from the Saudi Arabian government has yet to be determined by international investigators, the Guardian reported. 

But there have been speculations that a foreign government was involved in the leaks. A Medium post published by Jeff Bezos in February 2019 accused the National Enquirer's parent company AMI and AMI CEO David Pecker of "extortion and blackmail," unless he stopped referring to the leaks as politically motivated. Bezos also hinted at ties between the media organization and the Saudi Arabian government. And Amazon security consultant Gavin de Becker penned a personal account in the Daily Beast that concluded that the Saudi government had hacked Bezos' phone and gained access to his private information well before the Enquirer story was released. 

What was in the video file that MBS sent Bezos?

Likely some sort of malware, but we don't know for sure yet. The Guardian reported that a digital forensics analysis found it "highly probable" that Bezos' phone was breached after he clicked on an "infected" video file sent to him from MBS' WhatsApp account. However, we don't know what exactly the file was infected with — and therefore, what type of information it might have been capable of accessing.

Did bin Salman himself send the compromising text?

It's unclear. While The Guardian's report said the video was sent from bin Salman's personal WhatsApp account, that doesn't definitely prove that the crown prince himself sent the video. Bin Salman could have authorized someone else to send the video on his behalf. Alternatively, an unauthorized third-party could have surreptitiously accessed his account and sent the malware, though there are no indications so far suggesting that someone successfully hacked bin Salman in order to hack Bezos' phone.

Was Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group responsible? 

We don't know yet. But the Israeli cybersecurity firm, NSO Group has a history of selling software that hacks phones using WhatsApp. Crucially, the company has been linked to Saudi Arabia's alleged assassination of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A lawsuit filed by the Montreal-based Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz  accused NSO of helping Saudi Arabia's government spy on his communications with the murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi back in December 2018. NSO denied all allegations that its software helped lead to Khashoggi's death, the Associated Press reported. 

Almost a year later, WhatsApp parent company Facebook sued the Israeli group. NSO Group had exploited vulnerabilities in WhatsApp's video-calling system to send malware to the devices of over 1,400 users, to allow governments and intelligence organizations to spy on them, Facebook alleged in October 2019. 

Who else has accused MBS of hacking?

Bezos and MBS exchanged numbers during the crown prince's visit to the United States in April 2018, apparently during a trip  where the Saudi crown prince met with several prominent tech executives and investors, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai (who was running Google at the time), and investor Peter Thiel.

While there is no evidence of other hacking attempts carried out against these tech executives, there are several reports of hacking attempts carried out Saudi Arabia's dissenters around the same time Bezos' phone reportedly began transmitting data, including Abdulaziz, the Financial Times reported. 

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said the Microsoft-owned professional social network still has work to do to address sexual harassment and scamming on the platform, after a user wrote on open letter calling for greater measures to combat the problems.

LinkedIn user Amy Perkins in a Jan. 17 post on the website said that she's experienced harassment and attempted scams on the social network intended for professionals. The post had more than 6,200 reactions and 1,000 comments at the time of this writing.

Perkins said she uploaded a video to LinkedIn about her decision to quit her job after 25 years in education. The video went viral, she said, and soon she started receiving inappropriate comments from other users — some of them, she said, saying things like "hey sexy," "call me," and "you're hot." Perkins also said she was the target of an attempted scam by another LinkedIn user claiming to have a business opportunity.

"Here's the thing Jeff, I'm a middle-aged mom of two. I uploaded a video on a business platform, not a dating site. I was terrified and confused," Perkins wrote. "I was sick to my stomach, ready to delete my account."

Perkins has yet to respond to a request for an interview from Business Insider. However, LinkedIn users, particularly women, have reported experiencing harassment on the site for years, suggesting that her story is not an uncommon one on the site.

Weiner responded in a comment on Perkins' post, writing LinkedIn's efforts to address the problems have "room for improvement."

"It is completely unacceptable for you or any member of LinkedIn to experience this and runs completely counter to our values and expectations for community interaction," Weiner wrote. "We continue to invest aggressively to combat this kind of behavior, both through people and technology, but clearly still have room for improvement."

Perkins in a later post said LinkedIn followed up Weiner's comment with a call from a LinkedIn manager.

In a statement, LinkedIn reiterated its stance on the issue: "Abusive behavior is not tolerated. It's absolutely not acceptable for a member to harass others on LinkedIn. We have strong systems in place to monitor and keep members safe. We encourage anyone and everyone who has experienced harassment to report it to us."

The company in November released for the first time data about its efforts to eliminate harassment and fraud on the site. LinkedIn did not include the number of reports it received, only what it actually removed.

LinkedIn said it removed more than 16,000 instances of harassment from the website in the first half of the 2019. Harassment made up the largest category of content removed by LinkedIn. The company defined other categories as "adult" (11,019 removals), "violent or graphic" (1,933 removals), "hate speech" (1,637 removals), and "child exploitation" (22 removals).

Scams – or, as LinkedIn refers to then,  "untargeted, irrelevant, and repetitive communications or invitations, often for financial gain" – required most attention from LinkedIn during the same period. The company said it removed 60.5 million instances of this type of content, detected 99.8 percent of which it said it automatically detected. Around 100,000 were removed after being reported by individuals. 

Examples of the removed scams include recruiters offering high-paying jobs for little work or job postings that mirror an application to a reputable company. 

LinkedIn also said at the time that it removed 21 million fake accounts, most of which the company said it detected during registration.

NASA is preparing to launch its astronauts in the first commercial spacecraft ever built. 

But it took decades of experimenting, tinkering, and groundbreaking missions to reach this point. The US has been launching spacecraft since 1950 ⁠— before NASA even existed.

The agency keeps a library of historical photos from its earliest projects, including the Mercury missions that launched the first astronauts and the creation of the golden record sent into the cosmos on the Voyager mission.

The images are a window into the long and journey of US space exploration. Here are 24 remarkable vintage photos of NASA's early work.

It looks like Red Hat is turning out to be a really smart buy for IBM.

The tech giant's shares rallied late Tuesday after posting strong results on robust Red Hat numbers.

IBM said Red Hat revenue exceeded $1 billion in the quarter, up 24% year over year. IBM itself posted a modest revenue gain, which exceeded Wall Street's expectations.

"We're off to a great start with Red Hat," IBM Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh said on a call with analysts on Tuesday.

Clearly, Red Hat was a factor for this, analysts said.

"It appears that the Red Hat 'goodness' is kicking in," analyst Patrick Moorhead told Business Insider. IBM also got a boost from sales of its flagship mainframe products, which Moorhead attributed to "pent up demand."

The earnings results are good news for a tech behemoth which has repeatedly posted slumping revenues as it struggled to adapt to the rise of the cloud. IBM dominated the enterprise market by selling hardware and software that businesses used to set up and run their in-house data centers.

Like other traditional tech companies, it has had a hard time adapting to the cloud, which allows businesses to set up networks on web-based platforms run by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

IBM has said it's banking on a new trend called hybrid cloud, in which businesses run networks in the cloud, while keeping huge chunks of the data and applications in private data centers.

The company says it expects hybrid cloud to grow into a $1 trillion market that Big Blue will dominate. Buying Red Hat for $34 billion was part of that game plan.

The IBM report shows that the tech giant may be on the right track.

The company's results shows that the tech giant is making "good progress" in its bid to be a stronger player in the cloud era, IDC President Crawford Del Prete told Business Insider.

Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc said the report "confirms that their purchase of Red Hat and their  commitment to the cloud, AI and and investments in R&D are paying off for them." 

"They appear to be on much better footing over last year at this time and given the direction they are headed," he told Business Insider. "it is very possible that their growth will continue into the new year."  

Moorhead agreed saying: "I can see in a quarter or two that IBM gets back to overall growth. It has one of the better cloud value propositions, and what appears to be a growing Red Hat asset."

Not all analysts were impressed. Marty Wolf, president of Martinwolf M&A Advisors, said, "Expectations were so low that a nominal revenue beat of $150 million is causing speculators to do gymnastics after hours."

The "trend line" for the company still points to "revenue decline," he told Business Insider.

IBM reported a fourth-quarter profit of $3.67 billion, or $4.11 a share, compared to $1.95 billion, or $2.15 a share, for the year-ago quarter. Adjusted profit was $4.71 a share. Revenue edged higher to $21.78 billion from $21.76 billion. 

Analysts were expecting the company to report earnings of $4.68 a share on revenue of $21.64 billion. 

IBM's stock was up more than 4% in after-hours trades.

Got a tip about IBM or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @benpimentel or send him a secure message through Signal at (510) 731-8429. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

The State of California says one of the country's biggest gaming companies could be responsible for paying more than $400 million to female employees as a result of an ongoing sexual harassment and gender discrimination investigation.

In December 2019 Riot Games, the creator of "League of Legends," agreed to pay $10 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the company of fostering a sexist work environment. Two Riot employees, one former and one current, filed the suit in California Superior Court in November 2018 accusing Riot of denying them equal pay and blocking their career advancements on the basis of gender.

However, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing has objected to the settlement, preventing its approval in Los Angeles Superior Court. California's DFEH says that women at Riot could be entitled to more than $400 million in back pay based on the calculations used in the settlement. The department also said the settlement failed to incorporate "enforceable changes" to Riot's employment policies, the LA Times reported.

A Riot Games spokesperson told Business Insider it planned to file a legal rebuttal to the DFEH objections, calling the agency's $400 million number "absurd."

"It's a click-bait number with no grounding in reality," Riot spokesperson Joe Hixson said in an email.  

Hixson said the DFEH used a flawed methodology that is inconsistent with similar cases and failed to take into account important factors like job duties, skills and experience. 

The original class action suit alleged that Riot created a sexist work environment by fostering "bro culture" that normalized sexual harassment and misogyny aimed at employees of both genders. In December 2018 Riot suspended Chief Operating Officer Scott Gelb for upholding that culture of toxic masculinity, following reports that he had farted on employees and repeatedly hit their genitals as a running joke.

According to reports from ESPN, plaintiffs Jessica Negron and Gabriela Downie are due to receive the highest payouts from the settlement, $10,000 each. After accounting for legal fees and litigation, approximately $6.2 million in settlement payments will be distributed between the remaining members of the class.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Ryan Saba, told ESPN that the case had resulted in one of the largest gender inequality settlements in California's history.

Riot announced the class action settlement in a joint statement with the plaintiffs on August 23. At the time, Riot said it chose not to pursue litigation in favor of progressing past the dispute as a company. 

"While we believed that we had a strong position to litigate, we realized that in the long run, doing what is best for both Riot and Rioters was our ideal outcome," the company said in a blog post at the time. "Therefore, rather than entrench ourselves and continue to litigate, we chose to pivot and try to take an approach that we believe best demonstrates our commitment to owning our past, and to healing the company so that we can move forward together."

Riot has been overhauling its internal policies and company culture since reports of gender discrimination surfaced in August 2018, but some employees have remained critical of its approach. In May more than 100 employees participated in a walk-out of the company's Los Angeles studio to protest a newly introduced forced arbitration policy for workplace disputes.

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As many as eight senators could be in violation of senate rules during President Trump's impeachment trial, Roll Call reported.

According to decorum guidelines given to senators before the trial began, electronics are not allowed in the room at all. The rules read "No use of phones or electronic devices will be allowed in the Chamber. All electronics should be left in the Cloakroom in the storage provided." The rules prohibit tools that senators would typically use to connect with the outside world and share information on social media, although it seems likely that Trump himself will be on Twitter.

Sen. John Cornyn, one of the senators who reportedly wore an Apple Watch during the trial, told The Hill last week "We will not have our electronic devices. I just saw a piece of cabinetry in the cloakroom where we will be required to turn over our iPads and our iPhones."

Along with Cornyn, Roll Call reported that Sens. Mike Lee, John Thune, Jerry Moran, John Barrasso, Tim Scott, Michael Bennet, and Patty Murray were reportedly spotted with smart watches. They also published a photo showing an Apple Watch on Lee's wrist. Sen. Mitch McConnell's aide was also reportedly spotted wearing an Apple Watch. A representative for Sen. Bennet told Business Insider that the senator doesn't own an Apple Watch, and wasn't wearing a smart watch, and a representative for Sen. Barrasso told Business Insider that he was just wearing a square watch, and doesn't own an Apple Watch. Representatives for the other senators did not immediately respond to request for comment. 

Apple Watches and other smartwatches can perform many functions of a smartphone, like text, download apps, and make phone calls. Senators can even tweet from their watches.

The rules for the trial do not specify who will enforce them, or what possible repercussions there might be.

 

Trekkies rejoice, the highly-anticipated "Star Trek: Picard" series finally launches on January 23. But you won't be able to watch it through your regular TV package.

The series features the return of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. Stewart previously played the character of Picard on seven seasons of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and in four theatrical Star Trek films. "Picard" picks up 18 years after the events of Stewart's final film in the franchise, "Star Trek: Nemesis," and finds the character coming out of retirement after a mysterious woman seeks his help.

"Picard" also stars Santiago Cabrera, Isa Briones, Alison Pill, and Harry Treadaway. A few familiar faces from other "Star Trek" shows will make appearances as well, including Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, Brent Spiner as Data, Jonathan Frakes as William Riker, and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi.

Although CBS is producing the show, "Picard" will not air on the CBS network. Instead, you'll need to have a CBS All Access streaming subscription to watch it.

Here's everything you need know about streaming "Star Trek: Picard" on CBS All Access.

How can I watch "Star Trek: Picard" on CBS All Access?

In order to watch "Stark Trek: Picard," you'll need to sign up for a CBS All Access subscription. CBS All Access is a streaming service with live CBS programming and a growing collection of on-demand titles.

When you sign up for CBS All Access, you can choose between two subscription plans — a limited-commercials plan or a commercial-free plan. Both plans include monthly and annual payment options. The annual subscription method will save you over 15%. New subscribers can also receive a free 7-day trial. 

The limited-commercials plan costs $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year. This option features regular commercial interruptions during live TV, as well as commercial breaks while watching on-demand content.

The commercial-free plan costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year. Under this plan, live TV still includes regular commercials, but most on-demand content does not. This means you'll be able to watch "Star Trek: Picard" without ads.

What devices can I watch "Star Trek: Picard" on?

"Star Trek: Picard" is available to watch via the CBS All Access app on a variety of mobile devices, media boxes, and smart TVs.

The service is supported by Roku players, Apple TV, Fire TV, Chromecast, Android TV, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Samsung smart TVs, LG smart TVs, and Vizio smart TVs. You can also watch CBS All Access through a web browser on a PC or MAC.

When will new episodes of "Star Trek: Picard" premiere?

The first episode of "Star Trek: Picard" will premiere on Thursday, January 23 at 12:01 a.m. PT.

Unlike other streaming services like Netflix, CBS All Access does not release entire seasons of its shows all at once. Instead, new episodes of "Star Trek: Picard" will debut every Thursday. There will be a total of 10 episodes in the show's first season, with the season finale set to premiere on March 26.

If you're signing up for CBS All Access just to watch "Star Trek: Picard," you'll need to remain a subscriber through March in order to watch all the new episodes as they premiere. Alternatively, you could also wait until March 26 to subscribe in order to binge-watch the entire first season.

"Star Trek: Picard" has already been renewed for a second season, but a release date has not been announced yet. 

What else can I watch on CBS All Access?

In addition to "Star Trek: Picard," CBS All Access features a ton of other great live and on-demand content.

Other original on-demand titles produced exclusively for CBS All Access include "Star Trek: Discovery," "The Twilight Zone," and "The Good Fight."

The service also includes a library of more than 12,000 on-demand episodes from many current and classic TV shows. You can watch new episodes of shows like "Young Sheldon" and "NCIS" the day after they air on TV, or you can enjoy episodes of old favorites like "Cheers" and "I Love Lucy" whenever you'd like.

Finally, when it comes to live TV, CBS All Access lets you stream your local CBS station, as well as CBSN, CBS Sports HQ, and ET Live. Live local CBS coverage through CBS All Access is available in over 200 markets nationwide. 

 

You can easily block — and just as easily unblock — anyone on Facebook in the Messenger app with a few simple taps.

To do so, you'll have to access the "People" section of the app's preferences by clicking on your profile picture. After navigating through the menu, you can block and unblock friends by selecting a name from the list or by searching for a specific person.

It's also important to note that blocking someone on Messenger does not block them on Facebook as well. The two have separate functions, though you can view both settings in the same place. Blocking on Facebook removes the person as your friend and also blocks them on Messenger, while blocking on Messenger only blocks the person's calls and messages.

The process to block and unblock someone is very similar. Here's how to do both. 

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1. Open the Messenger app on your iPhone or Android device.

2. Tap your profile picture, which is located in a circle in the upper-left corner of the screen.

Netflix's "The Witcher" will be the streamer's biggest TV show premiere of all time.

The hit fantasy show was watched by 76 million households in the first month of its release (it dropped December 20) and is on track to become the streaming giant's biggest first season ever, Netflix said during its 2019 fourth-quarter earnings report on Tuesday.

But there's a caveat: Netflix updated its viewership metrics. Now the company counts a view if an account watches at least two minutes of a program. Before, Netflix counted a view if an account watched 70% of a movie or an episode of a TV series. It said in the report that two minutes is "long enough to indicate the choice was intentional."

"Given that we now have titles with widely varying lengths — from short episodes (e.g. Special at around 15 minutes) to long films (e.g. The Highwaymen at 132 minutes), we believe that reporting households viewing a title based on 70% of a single episode of a series or of an entire film, which we have been doing, makes less sense," Netflix said.

Netflix said "The Witcher" was its second most popular of 2019, behind "Stranger Things." Audience demand data from Parrot Analytics, provided to Business Insider, backs up how popular it is. The show is currently the most in-demand TV series in the world, passing Disney Plus' "Star Wars" series, "The Mandalorian."

Netflix itself even compared the show to "The Mandalorian" during its investor letter, using Google search trends data, and providing a chart that showed that "The Witcher" was trending higher after its release than "The Mandalorian" was during any point after its release.

"In Q4, despite the big debut of Disney Plus and the launch of Apple TV Plus, our viewing per membership grew both globally and in the US on a year over year basis, consistent with recent quarters," Netflix said.

However, Netflix still missed subscriber growth expectations in the US during the quarter as Disney Plus launched, adding 420,000 paid net subscribers during Q4, below its forecast of of 600,000 (it exceeded expectations internationally, though, adding 8.33 million subscribers outside of the US).

If you're an active user on Facebook, chances are you've come across users that make repetitive, inflammatory comments or even harassment on the platform. 

Fortunately, Facebook makes it very simple to block users on the site. Blocking a user on Facebook prevents the person from viewing your profile, messaging you, or tagging you in posts. 

It is also equally as easy to see who you've blocked on Facebook. Here's how. 

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How to see who you blocked on Facebook

1. Launch your preferred browser and go to https://www.facebook.com/ on your PC or Mac.

2. In the far right corner at the top of the page, select the downward-facing arrow icon. 

3. In the drop-down menu, select "Settings." 

4. Using the menu on the left, scroll down and click on "Blocking." 

5. Under "Block users," you will see a list of users you have blocked. 

You can choose to unblock a user by selecting "Unblock" next to his or her name. Note that after you've unblocked someone, you cannot block the user again for 48 hours. 

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