Facebook Sues Over Spyware Planted On WhatsApp

Facebook is gearing up its lawyers to take aggressive legal againts the NSO Group. The social media giant which owns the ubiquitous messaging palaform WhatsApp, is suing the Israeli NSO Group for cyber attacks asserting that the company was responsible for hacking WhatsApp to plant  malevolent  surveillance software. 

WhatsApp claims athe NSO spyware was used to exploit a vulnerability in the app to target approximately 1,400 people between in April and May this year.  

One hundred of those targeted were human rights defenders according to WhatsApp, in countries around the world. The vulnerability, first published about in May, allowed attackers to install spyware by calling the target using WhatsApp.

WhatsApp has launched a lawsuit against the Israeli surveillance firm, alleging that it was behind cyber-attacks on more than 100 human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and academics.

NSO Group, which sells its surveillance technology to governments all over the world, said in a statement on Tuesday 29th October that it disputed the claims in the WhatsApp lawsuit in the “strongest possible terms” and “will vigorously fight them.”

NSO Group added that its technology was used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in lawful antiterrorism efforts and crime-fighting, and it “has helped to save thousands of lives over recent years.”

WhatsApp claimed in the lawsuit, which it filed in the US state of California this week, that technology sold by NSO was used to target the mobile phones of users in 20 countries over a two-week period. WhatsApp has apparently been working with Citizen Lab, an academic research group which is based in the University of Toronto, to focus on the targets of the cyber-attacks and the technology that was being used. NSO Group, which makes software for surveillance, disputed the allegations.

WhatsApp said in a court filing that the NSO Group “developed their malware in order to access messages and other communications after they were decrypted on target devices”.

WhatsApp first discovered the hack in May. At the time it said that the attack was orchestrated by “an advanced cyber-actor” and it also said...“In May 2019 we stopped a highly sophisticated cyberattack that exploited our video calling system in order to send malware to the mobile devices of a number of WhatsApp users. The nature of the attack did not require targeted users to answer the calls they received. 

“We quickly added new protections to our systems and issued an update to WhatsApp to help keep people safe. We are now taking additional action, based on what we have learned to date.

“We sent a special WhatsApp message to approximately 1,400 users that we have reason to believe were impacted by this attack to directly inform them about what happened…We believe this attack targeted at least 100 members of civil society, which is an unmistakable pattern of abuse,” 

In a separet case, Facebook has recently agreed to pay a £500,000 fine imposed by the UK's data protection watchdog for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But as part of the agreement, Facebook has not made admission of liability. 

Facebook appealed against the penalty and so the Information Commissioner's Office when on to pursue its own counter-appeal. Facebook has now said it "wished it had done more to investigate Cambridge Analytica" earlier.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has also recently turned down appeals from the US government to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.

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