Ddos 
The notorious Israeli commercial spyware developer NSO Group has been ordered by a U.S. court jury to pay \$167 million in damages to WhatsApp, the messaging platform owned by social media giant Meta. The ruling stems from NSO’s 2019 cyberespionage campaign, which targeted more than 1,400 WhatsApp users.
NSO Group is best known for its Pegasus spyware—a highly invasive tool capable of exploiting zero-click vulnerabilities in iOS, allowing attackers to compromise devices without any user interaction. In past incidents, NSO leveraged vulnerabilities in Apple’s iMessage, enabling intrusions through nothing more than a target’s phone number or iCloud credentials, leading to comprehensive surveillance capabilities.
The attack on WhatsApp occurred in 2019, when one of NSO’s clients used Pegasus to monitor a large number of WhatsApp users. Once WhatsApp identified the intrusion, it promptly patched the vulnerability and filed a lawsuit against NSO in court.
The jury has now ruled that NSO must pay $167 million in punitive damages. In response, NSO denounced the verdict as outrageous, unlawful, and unconstitutional, petitioning the presiding judge to either reduce the award or grant a new trial.
In court filings, NSO argued that the punitive sum vastly exceeds statutory limits, with its legal counsel contending that the award violates the legal cap stipulating punitive damages may not exceed four times the compensatory amount.
The company’s attorneys further claimed the jury’s decision appears to be driven by a generalized animosity toward NSO’s business practices—an effort, they suggested, not to punish a specific infraction, but to force the company into insolvency. NSO also stated in filings that the damages far surpass its financial capacity to pay.
To its credit, NSO seems at least partially aware of the global disdain it commands. A company so deeply associated with invasive surveillance arguably has no rightful place in the digital ecosystem—its dissolution may well be the most fitting outcome.
A WhatsApp spokesperson issued a statement regarding NSO’s legal resistance:
“For the past six years, NSO has tried to avoid accountability at every turn. This is another expected attempt to claim impunity, in response to a strong message from the jury of U.S. citizens deciding to punish NSO for its 2019 illegal attack against an American company and its users. We’ll respond to the court as we continue to pursue a permanent injunction against NSO to prevent this spyware firm from targeting WhatsApp and our users ever again.”
Via: TechCrunch
Related Posts:
- U.S. State Department employees’ iPhones were hacked by NSO spyware
- Pegasus Spyware: Court Finds NSO Group Liable for 1,400 Infections
- NSO Group Exploits iOS 15 and iOS 16 with Zero-Click Attacks on Civil Society Targets
- Israel uses Pegasus spyware to track hostages in Gaza
- EU justice officials were targeted by Pegasus spyware
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