Maker Of Pegasus Spyware Told To Pay $167m For Whatsapp Hack

The patient down nan Pegasus spyware has been ordered to salary WhatsApp $167m (£125m) for hacking 1,400 group successful 2019.

Pegasus is malicious package which tin beryllium installed remotely connected mobile phones to access, among different things, people's microphones and cameras.

NSO Group, which sells nan tech, has been accused of enabling authoritarian regimes to show journalists, activists and moreover governmental figures.

WhatsApp proprietor Meta said it marked nan "first triumph against nan improvement and usage of forbidden spyware".

NSO said it would "carefully analyse nan verdict's specifications and prosecute due ineligible remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal“.

It is nan first clip a developer of spyware has been held responsible for exploiting nan weaknesses successful smartphone platforms.

NSO Group says nan tech is only meant to beryllium for usage against superior criminals and terrorists. But location are accusations nan tech has been utilized by immoderate countries to target anyone they deem a nationalist information threat.

Pegasus became a ungraded successful 2021 erstwhile a database of 50,000 telephone numbers of suspected victims of hacking was leaked to awesome media outlets.

From this list, world media identified nan telephone numbers of politicians and heads of state, business executives, activists, and respective Arab royal family members, arsenic good arsenic much than 180 journalists.

It is suspected that Pegasus spyware infected devices belonging to Downing Street and Foreign Office officials, according to Canadian investigative group The Citizen Lab.

Other salient figures believed to person been hacked see French President Emmanuel Macron, and relations of Jamal Khashoggi, a professional of Saudi Arabia's authorities who was murdered successful nan Saudi consulate successful Istanbul successful October 2018.

NSO Group has besides been ordered to salary Meta $444,000 successful damages.

The awards travel aft after a six-year conflict betwixt nan US societal media elephantine and nan Israeli surveillance firm.

"The jury's determination to unit NSO to salary damages is simply a captious deterrent to this malicious manufacture against their forbidden acts aimed astatine American companies," Meta said.

"We firmly judge that our exertion plays a captious domiciled successful preventing superior crime and coercion and is deployed responsibly by authorised authorities agencies," NSO said successful a statement.

WhatsApp's occurrence successful nan lawsuit opens up NSO to imaginable ineligible action from different exertion giants whose platforms were targeted pinch Pegasus spyware.