New Delhi: A US court has ordered the NSO group to hand over its code for its spyware products, including Pegasus, to WhatsApp as part of an ongoing legal action initiated against the American corporation.
Meta-owned WhatsApp had filed a suit against NSO Group in 2019 for illegally piggy-backing on a vulnerability in WhatsApp to deliver Pegasus spyware to targeted phones. In its petition before the US District Court for the Northern District of California, WhatsApp has accused Pegasus of compromising the phones of over 1,400 individuals over a two-week period.
The NSO Group had filed a petition before the US Supreme Court that the suit should be dismissed and that they were entitled to sovereign immunity as they were representing foreign governments. The Israeli firm has claimed that it has only sold Pegasus to “vetted governments” for use in anti-terror investigation. The Supreme Court had rejected the argument and refused to block WhatsApp’s lawsuit in January 2023.
According to The Guardian‘s report on Friday, Judge Phyllis Hamilton has instructed the NSO Group to provide “all relevant spyware” for a period of one year before and after the purported attacks on WhatsApp users, spanning April 29, 2018, and May 10, 2020. Additionally, NSO is required to furnish WhatsApp with details regarding “the full functionality of the relevant spyware”.
The US judge, however, did concur with NSO’s argument that, at present, the company should not be compelled to disclose the identities of its clients or details concerning its server architecture.
A WhatsApp spokesperson told The Guardian that the court ruling was an “important milestone in our long-running goal of protecting WhatsApp users against unlawful attacks”. “Spyware companies and other malicious actors need to understand they can be caught and will not be able to ignore the law,” the spokesperson said. There was no comment from NSO Group.
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The powerful Pegasus spyware allows access to smartphones and their entire content, permitting remote operators to switch on their microphones and cameras at will.
In July 2021, The Wire, Bottom of Formin collaboration with 16 other global media organisations led by Forbidden Stories, revealed the names of people who were either persons of interest or forensically identified as having been targeted by clients of the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.
In India, The Wire has revealed the names of 161 people who were targets or potential targets for surveillance by clients of the NSO Group.
In November 2021, the Biden administration blacklisted NSO after concluding that the Israeli spyware group had acted in a manner “contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US”. Last month, the US State Department announced a new policy that will allow the imposition of visa restrictions on individuals involved in the misuse of commercial spyware.
