NSO Group Found Liable for Hacking WhatsApp Users in ‘Huge Win for Privacy’

A federal court has found NSO Group, an Israeli spyware company, liable for reverse engineering WhatsApp in order to install malware on the phones of more than 1,400 people around the world, including human rights activists, diplomats, attorneys, and journalists.

NSO’s tools, commonly known as Pegasus, infiltrated phones by initiating a WhatsApp call to the intended victim, who did not even need to answer the call in order for the zero-click exploit to install a package into their phone’s memory that would then download malware that allowed NSO and its clients to extract messages, locations, photos, and other information from the device.

The company catered to repressive regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia, which allegedly caused Pegasus spyware to be installed on the phone of Hanan Elatr several months before it abducted and murdered her husband, journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Other victims included human rights advocates in Mexico, U.S. diplomats in Uganda, and likely Jeff Bezos.

WhatsApp filed its lawsuit against NSO Group in a California federal district court in 2019, alleging the spyware maker violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and WhatsApp’s own terms of service.

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