\n<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, WhatsApp scored a major victory against NSO Group<\/a> when a jury ordered the infamous spyware maker to pay more than $167 million in damages to the Meta-owned company.<\/p>\n The ruling concluded a legal battle spanning more than five years, which started in October 2019 when WhatsApp accused NSO Group<\/a> of hacking more than 1,400 of its users by taking advantage of a vulnerability in the chat app\u2019s audio-calling functionality<\/a>.<\/p>\n The verdict came after a week-long jury trial that featured several testimonies, including NSO Group\u2019s CEO Yaron Shohat and WhatsApp employees who responded and investigated the incident.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even before the trial began, the case had unearthed several revelations, including that NSO Group had cut off 10 of its government customers<\/a> for abusing its Pegasus spyware, the locations of 1,223 of the victims<\/a> of the spyware campaign, and the names of three of the spyware maker\u2019s customers: Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n TechCrunch read the transcripts of the trial\u2019s hearings and is highlighting the most interesting facts and revelations that came out. We will update this post as we learn more from the cache of more than 1,000 pages.\u00a0<\/p>\n The zero-click attack<\/a>, which means the spyware required no interaction from the target, \u201cworked by placing a fake WhatsApp phone call to the target,\u201d as WhatsApp\u2019s lawyer Antonio Perez said during the trial. The lawyer explained that NSO Group had built what it called the \u201cWhatsApp Installation Server,\u201d a special machine designed to send malicious messages across WhatsApp\u2019s infrastructure mimicking real messages.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOnce received, those messages would trigger the user\u2019s phone to reach out to a third server and download the Pegasus spyware. The only thing they needed to make this happen was the phone number,\u201d said Perez.\u00a0<\/p>\n NSO Group\u2019s research and development vice president Tamir Gazneli testified that \u201cany zero-click solution whatsoever is a significant milestone for Pegasus.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\tDo you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email<\/a>.<\/a>\t\t<\/div>\n For years, NSO Group has claimed that its spyware cannot be used against American phone numbers, meaning any cell number that starts with the +1 country code. <\/p>\n In 2022, The New York Times first reported<\/a> that the company did \u201cattack\u201d a U.S. phone but it was part of a test for the FBI.\u00a0<\/p>\n NSO Group\u2019s lawyer Joe Akrotirianakis confirmed this, saying the \u201csingle exception\u201d to Pegasus not being able to target +1 numbers \u201cwas a specially configured version of Pegasus to be used in demonstration to potential U.S. government customers.\u201d<\/p>\n The FBI reportedly chose<\/a> not to deploy Pegasus following its test.<\/p>\n NSO\u2019s CEO Shohat explained that Pegasus\u2019 user interface for its government customers does not provide an option to choose which hacking method or technique to use against the targets they are interested in, \u201cbecause customers don\u2019t care which vector they use, as long as they get the intelligence they need.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In other words, it\u2019s the Pegasus system in the backend that picks out which hacking technology, known as an exploit<\/a>, to use each time the spyware targets an individual.<\/p>\n In a funny coincidence, NSO Group\u2019s headquarters<\/a> in Herzliya, a suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel, is in the same building as Apple<\/a>, whose iPhone customers are also frequently targeted by NSO\u2019s Pegasus spyware. Shohat said NSO occupies the top five floors and Apple occupies the remainder of the 14-floor building.<\/p>\n The fact that NSO Group\u2019s headquarters are openly advertised is somewhat interesting on its own. Other companies that develop spyware or zero-days like the Barcelona-based Variston<\/a>, which shuttered in February<\/a>, was located in a co-working space while claiming on its official website to be located somewhere else.\u00a0<\/p>\n Following the spyware attack, WhatsApp filed its lawsuit against NSO Group in November 2019. Despite the active legal challenge, the spyware maker kept targeting the chat app\u2019s users, according to NSO Group\u2019s research and development vice president Tamir Gazneli.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gazneli said that \u201cErised,\u201d the codename for one of the versions of the WhatsApp zero-click vector, was in use from late-2019 up to May 2020. The other versions were called \u201cEden\u201d and \u201cHeaven,\u201d and the three were collectively known as \u201cHummingbird.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nTestimony described how the WhatsApp attack worked<\/strong><\/h2>\n
NSO Group confirms it targeted an American phone number as a test for the FBI<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Contact Us<\/h4>\n
How NSO Group\u2019s government customers use Pegasus<\/strong><\/h2>\n
NSO Group\u2019s headquarters shares the same building as Apple<\/strong><\/h2>\n
NSO Group admitted that it kept targeting WhatsApp users after the lawsuit was filed<\/strong><\/h2>\n