The Pegasus spyware created by Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO was found to have infected the phones of countless world leaders, human rights activists and journalists. The controversy that this brought was quite staggering, but in spite of the fact that this is the case the Israeli company has been fighting any attempts to hold it accountable. WhatsApp brought a lawsuit to court against the company which was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court.
WhatsApp has a lot to gain from this lawsuit because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making up for its role in the spyware. It was disseminated as a hidden bug in WhatsApp’s source code, and that is something that the Meta subsidiary will want some compensation for. It turns out that the Supreme Court has just given WhatsApp the green signal to sue NSO, which brought an end to the over three years worth of appeals that have hopped from court to court.
NSO is claiming that the spyware was being used as part of an intelligence gathering opposition against a terrorist organization. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that it has been used for a number of underhanded purposes as well. For example, the Saudi Government used the app to spy on journalist Jamal Kashoggi’s colleagues after he had been murdered.
The cybersecurity company has now been blacklisted, but the damage it caused can’t be reversed. Most of the people that were spied on with their spyware have a hard time staying safe, and the company sold its product to the very bad actors that it claimed it was trying to help target.
It will be interesting to see how this lawsuit plays out, because it could determine the future of the spyware industry. NSO is a major company in Israel, and its activities have poked holes in the image that Israel tries to portray, namely as a democratic and liberal country that values human rights.
Read next: WhatsApp Rolls Out New Proxy Support So Users With Network Disruptions Stay Connected
WhatsApp has a lot to gain from this lawsuit because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making up for its role in the spyware. It was disseminated as a hidden bug in WhatsApp’s source code, and that is something that the Meta subsidiary will want some compensation for. It turns out that the Supreme Court has just given WhatsApp the green signal to sue NSO, which brought an end to the over three years worth of appeals that have hopped from court to court.
NSO is claiming that the spyware was being used as part of an intelligence gathering opposition against a terrorist organization. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that it has been used for a number of underhanded purposes as well. For example, the Saudi Government used the app to spy on journalist Jamal Kashoggi’s colleagues after he had been murdered.
The cybersecurity company has now been blacklisted, but the damage it caused can’t be reversed. Most of the people that were spied on with their spyware have a hard time staying safe, and the company sold its product to the very bad actors that it claimed it was trying to help target.
It will be interesting to see how this lawsuit plays out, because it could determine the future of the spyware industry. NSO is a major company in Israel, and its activities have poked holes in the image that Israel tries to portray, namely as a democratic and liberal country that values human rights.
Read next: WhatsApp Rolls Out New Proxy Support So Users With Network Disruptions Stay Connected
