US court bans NSO Group from using spyware to target WhatsApp users

A United States court on Friday granted an injunction banning Israeli spyware firm NSO Group from targeting WhatsApp users in a 2019 cyber espionage case, saying that its conduct had caused “irreparable harm”, AFP reported.

However, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, in her ruling on Friday, also slashed an earlier amount of about $168 million that the NSO Group was directed to pay in punitive damages to $4 million, Al Jazeera reported.

Hamilton said that the NSO Group’s behaviour fell short of a “particularly egregious” standard needed to support the jury’s calculations in May on the financial penalty.

But the court “concluded that defendants’ conduct causes irreparable harm, and there being no dispute that the conduct is ongoing”, AFP reported.

In late 2019, WhatsApp, owned by US-based technology company Meta, sued NSO Group in the Northern California court for allegedly installing the Pegasus spyware on users’ phones including those of journalists and activists via the messaging app.

The messaging platform has alleged that the NSO Group’s spyware had been used against 1,400 users of the application over a two-week period in April and May 2019.

In December 2024, the judge ruled in the social media company’s favour, holding that the NSO Group illegally used a flaw in WhatsApp to install spyware on...

Read more