Jared Kushner Hacked Phone Reveals Secret Negotiations, Millions in Transactions

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In late spring 2020, a source I knew to be reliable called me with a story. The Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner’s phone and monitored him as he accessed a Dubai-based bank account. What was odd, the source said, was that the money in the account—hundreds of millions of dollars—had come from a bank in Azerbaijan. Most importantly, Kushner appeared to have transferred significant amounts of money from the Dubai account to other individuals, including a warlord, a mercenary and a one-time hit man. The story sounded preposterous, I told my source. And yet.

2020年春末，一位我深知可靠的消息人士打来电话，向我透露了一件事。荷兰政府入侵了贾里德·库什纳（Jared Kushner）的手机，并监控了他访问一个迪拜银行账户的过程。消息人士称，奇怪的是，该账户中数亿美元的资金来自阿塞拜疆的一家银行。最重要的是，库什纳似乎从该迪拜账户向其他人转移了巨额资金，其中包括一名军阀、一名雇佣兵和一名曾经的职业杀手。我告诉消息人士，这个故事听起来太荒谬了。然而，事实确实如此。

Six months later, I found myself speaking with someone else about the UAE government and their use of mercenaries in conflicts around the Middle East and Africa when I asked, on a whim, whether they knew anything about Kushner and bank transfers from a UAE account. My acquaintance grew quiet. Then they replied, “Yes.”

六个月后，当我和另一个人谈论阿联酋政府及其在中东和非洲冲突中使用雇佣兵的情况时，我心血来潮地问他们是否了解库什纳以及从阿联酋账户转账的事情。我的熟人沉默了片刻，然后回答说：“是的。”

Over the next four years, I came to learn that, sometime in late 2017, the Netherlands Defense Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) made a startling discovery. A General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) operative, a dark web hacker specializing in stolen bank data, was traveling to the UK for an espionage mission. They reached out to the British government for permission to apprehend him when he arrived. The British agreed.

在接下来的四年里，我逐渐了解到，2017年底的某个时候，荷兰国防情报与安全局（MIVD）有了一个惊人的发现。一名俄罗斯联邦武装力量总参谋部情报总局（GRU）的特工，即一名专门窃取银行数据的暗网黑客，正前往英国执行间谍任务。他们联系了英国政府，请求在对方抵达时将其逮捕。英国方面表示同意。

When the Russian national arrived in England, the Dutch informed him that he had two options: he could work for them against the GRU, or the British would arrest him. Once in UK government custody, the operative would be charged with espionage. If convicted, he would spend years in a British prison. The Russian chose to change his employer.

当这名俄罗斯公民抵达英国时，荷兰方面告知他有两个选择：要么为他们效力以对抗GRU，要么被英国逮捕。一旦落入英国政府手中，该特工将被控间谍罪。如果罪名成立，他将在英国监狱中度过多年。这名俄罗斯人选择了更换雇主。

Later that year, the Russian operative gave the Dutch spies access to one of the GRU’s most sensitive assets. Located in Rostov, Russia, the GRU’s hacking and cyber team operated a remote server on which they stored some of their bounty. During their search through these secret files, the Dutch found something astonishing: screenshots of Jared Kushner’s iPhone.

那年晚些时候，这名俄罗斯特工让荷兰间谍接触到了GRU最敏感的资产之一。GRU的黑客和网络团队在俄罗斯罗斯托夫运营着一台远程服务器，用于存储他们的部分战利品。在搜查这些秘密文件时，荷兰人发现了一件令人震惊的事情：贾里德·库什纳iPhone的屏幕截图。

In The Hague, the MIVD hacking team tried to reverse engineer the Russian penetration of Kushner’s iPhone. Kushner owned what was then the latest model, the iPhone X. Released in November 2017, it featured Face ID, a state-of-the-art security feature that Apple had promoted at its launch. The Dutch team had been trying to pick the phone’s door lock, so to speak, when it occurred to them that the Russians may have found an unlocked window to gain entry instead. Their hypothesis was correct. By early 2018, the MIVD had found a vulnerability in the iPhone that gave them access. The security exploit wasn’t perfect, however. Some malware allows a hacker to turn a victim’s phone into a microphone and video camera, turn the phone on or off, and pull and add files. The Dutch solution did not provide that level of access. Instead, when Kushner used the phone, they could see his screen. Almost as soon as they got inside, the intelligence service began capturing every image of Kushner’s screen as he used it, filing their own cache of surveillance on their internal computer servers.

在海牙，MIVD黑客团队试图对俄罗斯人入侵库什纳iPhone的方式进行逆向工程。库什纳当时使用的是最新款iPhone X。该机型于2017年11月发布，配备了苹果在发布会上大力宣传的最先进安全功能——面容ID（Face ID）。荷兰团队本想尝试“撬开”手机的门锁，但他们突然想到，俄罗斯人可能找到了一个未锁的窗户进入。他们的假设是正确的。到2018年初，MIVD发现了iPhone的一个漏洞，从而获得了访问权限。然而，这种安全漏洞并不完美。某些恶意软件允许黑客将受害者的手机变成麦克风和摄像机，开关手机，以及提取和添加文件。荷兰人的方案无法提供那种程度的访问权限。相反，当库什纳使用手机时，他们可以看到他的屏幕。几乎在进入系统后，情报部门就开始捕捉库什纳使用手机时的每一张屏幕图像，并将他们自己的监控缓存归档在内部计算机服务器上。

As they monitored Kushner’s phone, they discovered he used it to log in to a UAE bank account. By the time the Dutch spies had visibility into the phone, the account had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan. Their initial assessment was that the bank account was affiliated with the government there.

在监控库什纳手机的过程中，他们发现他用该手机登录了一个阿联酋银行账户。当荷兰间谍能够查看该手机时，该账户已经收到了来自阿塞拜疆一家银行的数亿美元资金。他们最初的评估是，该银行账户与当地政府有关联。

For the MIVD hackers, the bank account became an intelligence mystery to unravel. Nearly everything they worked on had a tinge of Russian conspiracy. A little over a year into Trump’s first presidency, the MIVD, like FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Washington working on the Robert Mueller调查, had only part of the story.

对于MIVD的黑客来说，这个银行账户成了一个亟待解开的情报谜团。他们处理的几乎所有事情都带有俄罗斯阴谋的色彩。在特朗普第一个总统任期开始一年多后，MIVD就像华盛顿负责罗伯特·穆勒（Robert Mueller）调查的联邦调查局特工和联邦检察官一样，只掌握了故事的一部分。

Kushner, UAE ruler Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia, converged at an auspicious moment. MBS wanted to be crown prince. MBZ wanted to blow up Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, and Kushner wanted both to help him force the Palestinians into a deal that Israel would accept. Despite the perception of his wealth, Kushner was not entirely financially independent of his parents, and the family business, Kushner Companies, faced a billion-dollar loan coming due on their trophy property, the Manhattan office building at 666 Fifth Avenue.

库什纳、阿联酋统治者穆罕默德·本·扎耶德（MBZ）和沙特阿拉伯的穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼（MBS）在一个关键时刻走到了一起。MBS想成为王储，MBZ想破坏奥巴马的伊朗核协议，而库什纳则希望两人都能帮助他迫使巴勒斯坦人接受以色列认可的协议。尽管外界认为库什纳很富有，但他并非完全在经济上独立于父母，且其家族企业库什纳公司（Kushner Companies）面临着曼哈顿第五大道666号办公大楼这一标志性资产价值十亿美元的贷款到期问题。

Early in the first Trump administration, MBZ and MBS offered to pay for a slush fund dedicated to helping the new administration with foreign policy goals. The idea was to help pay for Trump’s promised wall between Mexico and the US, for example, in an effort to secure a second term in the White House. The two Arab royals initially discussed with Kushner putting more than $10 billion into the effort. Within months, though, as MBZ pushed the Trump administration to help back MBS’s effort to become his country’s crown prince—and future king—the broader foreign policy slush fund idea fizzled. Instead, MBZ and MBS initially, and then MBZ alone, put at least $2 billion into at least two bank accounts for Kushner. It is unclear how the royals organized their $2 billion in combined payments, but they effectively split the cost. For the purposes of explanation, it is best to understand where and how each bank account was controlled.

在特朗普政府执政初期，MBZ和MBS提出设立一个行贿基金，专门用于帮助新政府实现外交政策目标。例如，其想法是帮助支付特朗普承诺修建的墨西哥与美国之间的边境墙，以确保他能连任白宫。这两位阿拉伯王室成员最初与库什纳讨论投入超过100亿美元。然而，几个月后，随着MBZ推动特朗普政府支持MBS成为沙特王储（及未来国王），更广泛的外交政策行贿基金计划便不了了之。取而代之的是，MBZ和MBS最初，随后仅由MBZ，向库什纳的至少两个银行账户投入了至少20亿美元。目前尚不清楚这两位王室成员是如何组织这20亿美元联合付款的，但他们实际上分摊了这笔费用。为了便于解释，最好了解每个银行账户是在哪里以及如何被控制的。

Bank account Alpha was held at First Abu Dhabi Bank, the largest in the UAE, and was overseen by MBZ’s brother, Tahnoon bin Zayed, who served as the bank’s chairman. Beginning in 2017, the Saudis and Emiratis transferred roughly $750 million into the Alpha account. Alpha would be used as a foreign policy fund. This money would be overseen and partially managed by Kushner and MBZ, who, in their effort to strike a grand bargain to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, believed the region’s map needed to be redrawn.

“Alpha”银行账户开设在阿联酋最大的银行——阿布扎比第一银行（First Abu Dhabi Bank），由MBZ的兄弟、担任该行董事长的塔农·本·扎耶德（Tahnoon bin Zayed）监管。从2017年开始，沙特和阿联酋向Alpha账户转入了约7.5亿美元。Alpha账户将被用作外交政策基金。这笔资金将由库什纳和MBZ监督并部分管理，他们为了达成结束巴以冲突的“大交易”，认为该地区的地图需要重新绘制。

“Jared was looking for shortcuts in his diplomacy,” a source who knew of the UAE’s deal with Kushner said. This person held discussions with both seni

“贾里德在外交上寻找捷径，”一位了解阿联酋与库什纳交易的消息人士说。此人曾与双方的高层进行过讨论。