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. 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.
Read more…
Source: TechCrunch News
Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.
Related:
- NSO Group Impersonates Facebook Security Team to Spread Spyware — Report
May 22, 2020
According to an investigative journalist team, the Israeli authors of the infamous Pegasus mobile spyware, NSO Group, have been using a spoofed Facebook login page, crafted to look like an internal Facebook security team portal, to lure victims in. The news comes as Facebook alleges that NSO Group has been using U.S.-based infrastructure to launch espionage ...
- This powerful Android malware stayed hidden for years, infecting tens of thousands of smartphones
May 14, 2020
A carefully managed hacking and espionage campaign is infecting smartphones with a potent form of Android malware, providing those behind it with total control of the device, while also remaining completely hidden from the user. Mandrake spyware abuses legitimate Android functions to help gain access to everything on the compromised device in attacks that can gather ...
- Upgraded Cerberus Spyware Spreads Rapidly via MDM
May 1, 2020
A newly discovered variant of the Cerberus Android trojan has been spotted, with vastly expanded and more sophisticated info-harvesting capabilities, and the ability to run TeamViewer. It was spotted by researchers being used in a targeted campaign on a multinational conglomerate. Unusually, the sample propagated through the employee pool via the infected company’s mobile device management ...
- Oil and Gas Firms Targeted With Agent Tesla Spyware
April 21, 2020
Attackers are targeting energy companies with the Agent Tesla spyware, as seen in recent spearphishing emails with malicious attachments. Researchers say that until now, Agent Tesla has not been associated with campaigns targeting the oil-and-gas vertical. The emails leverage the tumultuous nature of today’s oil and gas markets, which have been under tremendous stress in recent weeks, as ...
- Australian Health Insurance-Themed Spam Spreads Ursnif
April 21, 2020
Trend Micro researchers encountered a spam campaign referencing the Australian health insurance brand Medicare. The attachment, which Trend Micro detects as Trojan.X97M.URSNIF.THDAEBO, downloads the malicious file (detected as TrojanSpy.Win32.URSNIF.THDAEBO). The campaign aims to spread the spyware Ursnif, also known as Gozi. The email headers pertain to payment transactions with the words “Statement,” “Invoice,” or “Transaction,” and include a ...
- Coronavirus Update App Leads to Project Spy Android and iOS Spyware
April 14, 2020
Trend Micro has discovered a potential cyberespionage campaign, which we have named Project Spy, that infects Android and iOS devices with spyware (detected by Trend Micro as AndroidOS_ProjectSpy.HRX and IOS_ProjectSpy.A, respectively). Project Spy uses the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as a lure, posing as an app called Coronavirus Updates. We also found similarities in two older samples ...