WhatsApp has been awarded $167 million (approximately Rs 1,414.856 crores) in damages following a ruling against the NSO Group, infamous for its Pegasus spyware, which was found guilty of disseminating malware via the messaging platform. This decision concludes a six-year legal battle. In 2019, WhatsApp's parent company, Meta, filed a lawsuit against the Israeli NSO Group after discovering that its Pegasus spyware targeted over 1,400 individuals across 20 countries, including journalists and human rights advocates. Meta described the event as a “highly sophisticated cyber attack” that enabled malware to infiltrate devices through video calls, even when those calls went unanswered.
In December, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the NSO Group had violated the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by employing its widely known Pegasus software to attack phones with WhatsApp installed. The recent verdict followed a week-long jury trial aimed at determining the damages owed to Meta. The jury ultimately decided on awarding $444,719 (around Rs 3 crore) in compensatory damages alongside $167,254,000 in punitive damages.
WhatsApp's VP, Carl Woog, stated that this recent verdict sends a strong message against the illegal practices of the NSO Group targeting American firms and undermining user privacy. Meanwhile, NSO Group maintains that its Pegasus software cannot be used on U.S. phone numbers and insists that WhatsApp was not impacted.
NSO's Gil Lainer has indicated plans to appeal the ruling, arguing that their technology is instrumental in preventing serious crimes and terrorism. In response, Woog mentioned that Meta intends to secure the awarded damages and plans to donate a portion to digital rights organizations, while also seeking a court order to halt any future targeting by NSO.
Additionally, in 2019, WhatsApp alerted several individuals in India about possible monitoring of their devices. Among those notified were human rights activist Bela Bhatia and lawyer Nihal Singh Rathod, who is connected to the Bhima Koregaon case. Both confirmed that they received warnings from WhatsApp, indicating that their phones had been under surveillance with advanced technology for two weeks leading up to May 2019.
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