NSO lawyer names Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan as spyware customers behind 2019 WhatsApp hacks

The governments of Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan, among others, were behind the 2019 hacking campaign that targeted more than 1,200 WhatsApp users with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to a lawyer working for the Israeli spyware maker. During a hearing in the lawsuit between WhatsApp and NSO Group last Thursday, NSO Group’s lawyer Joe Akrotirianakis specifically named the three governments as the spyware-using customers, according to a transcript of the hearing obtained by TechCrunch this week. This is the first time that representatives for NSO Group have publicly confirmed who the spyware maker’s customers are (or were), after years of refusing to acknowledge or discuss its clientele, arguing that it was “unable” to do so, an NSO Group spokesperson told TechCrunch in 2023, for example. The revelation comes as part of a lawsuit brought by Meta-owned WhatsApp in 2019, which accused NSO Group of hacking around 1,400 WhatsApp users by exploiting a vulnerability in the mes ... Read full article.