WhatsApp said that it disrupted a new hacking campaign linked to NSO Group, a spyware maker that has been ensnared in countless cases of abuse all over the world. The messaging app maker accused NSO of violating an earlier court order that bars the company from targeting WhatsApp and its users with its spyware, and is seeking to hold NSO in contempt of court.
On Monday, the Meta-owned chat app announced that it “caught and disrupted spear phishing attempts linked to NSO” after an investigation prompted by user reports. “They tried to trick people into clicking on malicious links to drive them to external websites outside of WhatsApp,” the company wrote. “We also caught them creating test accounts and groups on WhatsApp, which we took down.”
Read more…
Source: TechCrunch News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Israel Police Used NSO’s Pegasus Spyware Against Top Gov’t Officials, Journalists and Activists
February 7, 2022
Israel Police used NSO’s Pegasus spyware to hack the phones of public figures, including protest leaders, journalists, government employees and associates of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a report by Calcalist on Monday. According to the report, the hacking tool was used without a court order and against Netanyahu’s son, Avner Netanyahu, co-defendant in ...
- NSO Group Pegasus Spyware Aims at Finnish Diplomats
January 31, 2022
The controversial Pegasus spyware, developed by NSO Group, has been found on the devices of Finland’s diplomatic corps serving outside the country as part of a wide-ranging espionage campaign, according to Finnish officials. They also said the infections were of the zero-click variety. “The highly sophisticated malware has infected users’ Apple or Android telephones without their noticing ...
- Campaigns abusing corporate trusted infrastructure hunt for corporate credentials on ICS networks
January 19, 2022
In 2021, Kaspersky ICS CERT experts noticed a growing number of anomalous spyware attacks infecting ICS computers across the globe. Although the malware used in these attacks belongs to well-known commodity spyware families, these attacks stand out from the mainstream due to a very limited number of targets in each attack and a very short lifetime ...
- Poland: Ruling party leader admits country has Pegasus hacking software
January 7, 2022
Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and the country’s de facto leader, confirmed that the government has the Pegasus hacking software system but denied it had been used against opposition politicians in the 2019 parliamentary election campaign. “It would be bad if the Polish services did not have this type of ...
- After NSO Scandal, What’s Next for Israel’s Cyber Industry?
December 28, 2021
The year 2021 was not a good one for NSO Group, an Israeli technology firm that became famous, and then notorious, for its Pegasus spyware, capable of remote surveillance of smartphones. Once a promising startup that developed a unique tool to fight against terror and crime, NSO Group is now associated with targeted attacks against journalists ...
- A deep dive into an NSO zero-click iMessage exploit: Remote Code Execution
December 16, 2021
Google Project Zero researchers want to thank Citizen Lab for sharing a sample of the FORCEDENTRY exploit with them, and Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) group for collaborating with Google Project Zero on the technical analysis. The editorial opinions reflected below are solely Project Zero’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations ...