The US district court of Northern California found that NSO Group violated federal and California state hacking statutes and breached WhatsApp’s terms of service by targeting WhatsApp’s users and infrastructure with Pegasus spyware.
This week, a California court held that NSO Group should pay $447,719 in compensatory damages and a staggering $167,254, 000 in punitive damages for targeting whatsApp’s infrastructure with its spyware famously known as Pegasus. The legal battle, which started in October 2019, when the case was heard by the US federal 9th circuit court of Northern California after Meta’s owned social platform sued NSO group in United States court.
The US district court of northern California ruled that NSO Group which an Israeli based company has been at the center of human rights violations against journalists, Human rights activists and political dissidents around the world is liable to pay damages for its hacking operations.
The NSO Group have been supplying governments around the world with surveillance tools such as the powerful Pegasus spyware which has been used to monitor and crack down on human rights defenders and dissidents. In 2019, WhatsApp under the tech giant Meta publicly attribute the Pegasus attack to NSO Group after they identified and shortly thereafter fixed a vulnerability that allowed attackers to inject commercial spyware on to phones simply by ringing the number of a target’s device.
This decision is the first major court victory against NSO Group in the world and a major sign for spyware companies that the period of impunity is over.
Source : (https://therecord.media/judge-rules-nso-group-liable-for-hack-of-1400-whatsapp-users)
Tags : #WhatsApp #NSOGroup #Spyware #Pegasus #Surveillance #CourtRuling #DigitalRights #SurveillanceTechnologyProviders #LawTech #Business&HumanRights
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