The US Supreme Court has quashed spyware maker NSO Group’s argument that it cannot be held legally responsible for using WhatsApp technology to deploy its Pegasus snoop-ware on users’ phones.
Facebook and its WhatsApp subsidiary sued the notorious Isreal-based software company in 2019, alleging that NSO exploited a zero-day bug in WhatsApp to remotely drop Pegasus on about 1,400 smartphones belonging to attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats and other senior foreign government officials in multiple countries.
Pegasus, of course, is the now-infamous malware that NSO claims is only sold to legitimate government agencies — not private companies or individuals — and can only be used “for the purpose of preventing and investigating terrorism and other serious crimes,” despite numerous reports from Citizen Lab, Google, and the media of the malicious code being used to spy on journalists, activists, and politicians by their opponents.
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Source: The Register