During the briefing, it was noted that Haka was asked if UN Secretary General António Guterres is using the application for negotiations with world leaders.
“At the moment, UN senior management has been advised not to use WhatsApp as an insecure communication mechanism. So no, I don’t think the Secretary General is using it, ”he said.
He did not comment on reports of the possible involvement of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in hacking the phone of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos through WhatsApp.
“We need to get more information ... We drew attention to what the special rapporteurs said and we will monitor the further development of the situation with these allegations,” he added.
According to the agency, previously independent UN experts Agnes Kallamar and David Kaye said they did not exclude the involvement of the Saudi Crown Prince in hacking Bezos’s mobile phone.
Special rapporteurs expressed concern about the fact that a WhatsApp account, which supposedly belongs to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, was uploaded in 2018 with a digital spyware program that allowed it to monitor Bezos.
In the fall of 2019, a former employee of the US National Security Agency, Edward Snowden, said that the use of WhatsApp and Telegram instant messengers is “extremely dangerous” for senior officials.