Last week, Israeli firm NSO Group, best known for its Pegasus spyware targeting iPhones and Android devices, was ordered to pay Meta more than $167M for targeting WhatsApp users.
Now, TechCrunch has published an interesting report based on the 1,000+ page transcript of the trial.
The aftermath
As soon as the verdict was read, Meta celebrated the outcome as “an important step forward for privacy and security.” The ruling capped a legal battle that stretched over five years, with the court also ordering NSO to hand over the code for Pegasus and its other spyware tools to WhatsApp.
With such a long and sprawling case, it’s no surprise that the transcript runs over 1,000 pages. Some of its contents, however, might raise a few eyebrows.
One piece of information, however, goes to show the firm’s fearlessness (let’s call it that) when it comes to targeting users with its spyware. As Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai writes:
Following the spyware attack, WhatsApp filed its lawsuit against NSO Group in November 2019. Despite the active legal challenge, the spyware maker kept targeting the chat app’s users, according to NSO Group’s research and development vice president Tamir Gazneli.
Gazneli said that “Erised,” the codename for one of the versions of the WhatsApp zero-click vector, was in use from late-2019 up to May 2020. The other versions were called “Eden” and “Heaven,” and the three were collectively known as “Hummingbird.”
The story is a quick read, but well worth your time if you are into infosec. It goes into how the attack worked and what its relationship with government customers is like.
In its official statement about the victory, Meta promised to publish unofficial trial transcripts for “researchers and journalists studying these threats and working to protect the public.” NSO, on the other hand, vowed to appeal.
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