Spyware Empire Under Scrutiny

Tech company says it ‘caught and disrupted’ NSO Group’s attempts to access accounts in Jordan and Lebanon.

A spyware firm has been targeting WhatsApp users with malicious links in contravention of a US court order forbidding it from doing so, Meta has said.

In a post, Meta said WhatsApp had “caught and disrupted spear phishing attempts” by NSO Group, which a spokesperson said targeted a handful of users in Jordan and Lebanon. It had also caught the group creating “test accounts and groups” on WhatsApp.

NSO was founded in Israel but, since last year, is under US ownership. It built the Pegasus spyware, at the time one of the most powerful surveillance tools ever – which used a vulnerability in WhatsApp to infiltrate users’ phones and harvest all their data: messages, photos, calls and more.

Last year, it lost a court case against Meta for exploiting WhatsApp to target people; Meta was awarded $167m in damages. A later case reduced this to $4m but placed a permanent injunction against NSO barring it from targeting WhatsApp and its users.

- Author: Aisha Down, The Guardian

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