Eight things we learned from WhatsApp vs. NSO Group spyware lawsuit

On May 6, WhatsApp scored a major victory against NSO Group when a jury ordered the infamous spyware maker to pay more than $167 million in damages to the Meta-owned company. The ruling concluded a legal battle spanning more than five years, which started in October 2019 when WhatsApp accused NSO Group of hacking more than 1,400 of its users by taking advantage of a vulnerability in the chat app’s audio-calling functionality. The verdict came after a week-long jury trial that featured several testimonies, including NSO Group’s CEO Yaron Shohat and WhatsApp employees who responded and investigated the incident. Even before the trial began, the case had unearthed several revelations, including that NSO Group had cut off 10 of its government customers for abusing its Pegasus spyware, the locations of 1,223 of the victims of the spyware campaign, and the names of three of the spyware maker’s customers: Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan. TechCrunch read more than 1,000 pages of court ... Read full article.