Meta wins Rs 1,400 crore lawsuit against Pegasus-maker NSO group over WhatsApp hack
Meta has won Rs 1,400 crore or $167.25 million in a lawsuit against Israel's NSO Group, the maker of the Pegasus spyware. Additionally, the federal jury in California also rewarded Meta $444,719 (which is over Rs 3.7 crore) in compensatory damages. '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. Today, the jury's decision to force NSO, a notorious foreign spyware merchant, to pay damages is a critical deterrent to this malicious industry against their illegal acts aimed at American companies and the privacy and security of the people we serve,' Meta said in a statement share in a blog post.
"We will carefully examine the verdict's details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal," NSO Group vice president for global communication Gil Lainer said, according to a report by AFP .
In 2019, Meta sued the NSO group for hacking into 1,400 WhatsApp users' accounts using the Pegasus spyware. The attack, which was first pointed out by Citizen Lab, infected smartphones with the spyware via a phone call. It didn't matter whether a user answered the call or not. Once a phone was infected, the Pegasus spyware took control over a users' camera and microphone remotely, and was able to access their call records, look through their messages, emails, access their locations, etc. In December 2024, a US court held the NSO Group liable for WhatsApp hacks.
'NSO's Pegasus works to covertly compromise people's phones with spyware capable of hoovering up information from any app installed on the device. Think anything from financial and location information to emails and text messages, or as NSO conceded: 'every kind of user data on the phone.' It can even remotely activate the phone's mic and camera – all without people's knowledge, let alone authorisation,' Meta writes in the post.
The hack particularly targeted journalists, human rights activists, and diplomats and affected users in over 50 countries. And according to a court filing last month, at least 100 of the 1,400 attacks were located in India. These targets reportedly took place in a span of two months between April and May 2019.
Meta says that its investigation found that Meta was not the only target for the NSO Group. 'While we stopped the attack vector that exploited our calling system in 2019, Pegasus has had many other spyware installation methods to exploit other companies' technologies to manipulate people's devices into downloading malicious code and compromising their phones', Meta claims.
Meta says that the NSO Group was 'forced to admit that it spends tens of millions of dollars annually to develop malware installation methods including through instant messaging, browsers, and operating systems, and that its spyware is capable of compromising iOS or Android devices to this day'.
In 2021, Apple also sued the NSO Group for using the Pegasus spyware to target iPhone users. Apple had said at the time that it was 'seeking a permanent injunction to ban NSO Group from using any Apple software, services, or devices'.
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