NSO Group, the Israeli cyber intelligence firm behind Pegasus spyware has been asked to pay WhatsApp $167 million for hacking 1,400 people in 2019. Pegasus is a malicious software that can be remotely installed on mobile phones to remotely access people’s microphones and cameras. NSO Group, which sells the tech, has been accused of enabling authoritarian regimes to monitor journalists, activists and even political figures.
While WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta said this marked the “first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware.” NSO said it would “carefully examine the verdict’s details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal.”
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Pegasus came under fire in 2021 when a list of 50,000 phone numbers of suspected victims of hacking was leaked to major media outlets. This list included the phone numbers of politicians and heads of state, business executives, activists, and several Arab royal family members, as well as more than 180 journalists.
According to Canadian investigative group The Citizen Lab, the spyware infected devices belonging to Downing Street, and Foreign Office officials. Other prominent figures, like Emmanuel Macron, and relations of Jamal Khashoggi are believed to have been hacked as well. NSO Group has also been ordered to pay Meta $444,000 in damages.
Meta, in a blog post, called this decision “a critical deterrent to this malicious industry against their illegal acts aimed at American companies and our users worldwide.” The company also claimed the trial revealed that “WhatsApp was far from NSO’s only target — this is an industry-wide threat and it’ll take all of us to defend against it.”
Meta also said that it had a “long road ahead to collect awarded damages from NSO,” and it did plan on doing so. “Our next step is to secure a court order to prevent NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp again,” the company said.