Maker of Pegasus spyware told to pay $167m for WhatsApp hack

The Israeli steadfast down the Pegasus spyware has been ordered to wage WhatsApp $167m (£125m) for hacking 1,400 radical successful 2019.

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

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

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

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

It is the archetypal clip a developer of spyware has been held liable for exploiting the weaknesses successful smartphone platforms.

NSO Group says the tech is lone meant to beryllium for usage against superior criminals and terrorists. But determination are accusations the tech has been utilized by immoderate countries to people 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 large media outlets.

From this list, planetary media identified the telephone numbers of politicians and heads of state, concern executives, activists, and respective Arab royal household 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 radical 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 the Saudi consulate successful Istanbul successful October 2018.

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

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

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

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

WhatsApp's occurrence successful the lawsuit opens up NSO to imaginable ineligible enactment from different exertion giants whose platforms were targeted with Pegasus spyware.