Jury orders Israeli firm to pay WhatsApp nearly $170M in damages
May 7 (UPI) -- A federal jury in California has ordered Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO to pay WhatsApp nearly $170 million in damages for using the smartphone messaging application to spy on nearly 1,500 human rights activists, journalists and political dissidents in 2019.
"Today's verdict in WhatsApp's case is an important step forward for privacy and security as the first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware that threatens the safety and privacy of everyone," WhatsApp said Tuesday in a blog post.
NSO, infamous for its Pegasus malware, was ordered Tuesday to pay WhatsApp $167 million in punitive damages and an additional $440,000 in compensatory damages, The Hill reported.
Meta, then known as Facebook, filed the lawsuit against NSO Group Technologies Limited in 2019, accusing it of infecting the smartphones of some 1,400 users with its Pegasus malware between April and May of that year over its WhatsApp messaging service.
Targets included attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, dissidents, diplomats and senior government officials. The targets were from several countries, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.
The lawsuit never stated who had hired NSO.
According to WhatsApp, during the six-year litigation, it was learned that Pegasus, once installed on a smartphone, had the ability to suck up information from any app on the device -- information from financial and location to emails and text messages -- as well as control their microphones and cameras.
A judge in December had ruled in WhatsApp's favor, with the jury deciding on compensation Tuesday.
"The jury's verdict today to punish NSO is a critical deterrent to the spyware industry against their illegal acts aimed at American companies and our users worldwide," WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said on X.
"The fight isn't over. Our next step is to secure a court order to prevent NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp again."
WhatsApp said in its blog post that the trial also showed that WhatsApp was not NSO's only target and that it has had "many other spyware installation methods" to exploit technologies of other companies to gain access to customers' phones.
"Given how much information people access on their devices, including through private end-to-end encrypted apps like WhatsApp, Signal and others, we will continue going after spyware vendors indiscriminately targeting people around the world," it said.
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