However, the court reduced an earlier damages award from USD 168 million to just USD 4 million. In a ruling on Friday granting WhatsApp owner Meta an injunction to prevent NSO’s spyware from being used on the messaging service, District Judge Phyllis Hamilton said the Israeli company’s “conduct causes irreparable harm,” adding that there was “no dispute that the conduct is ongoing.” Hamilton stated that NSO’s actions “serve to defeat” one of WhatsApp’s core purposes: user privacy.

“Part of what companies such as WhatsApp are ‘selling’ is informational privacy, and any unauthorised access is an interference with that sale,” she wrote.

In her ruling, Hamilton said evidence presented at trial showed that NSO had reverse-engineered WhatsApp’s code to secretly install its spyware, Pegasus, on users’ phones, repeatedly redesigning it to evade detection and bypass security fixes.

Founded in 2010 and based in the Israeli seaside tech hub of Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, NSO Group markets Pegasus as a tool for law enforcement agencies to combat crime and terrorism. The software allows operators to remotely infiltrate and monitor devices.

NSO says it sells Pegasus only to vetted and legitimate government law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But Meta, which owns WhatsApp, filed a lawsuit in US federal court in late 2019, accusing NSO of exploiting its encrypted messaging platform to target journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists.

Independent experts have also said NSO’s spyware has been used by several governments — including some with poor human rights records — to target critics and dissidents.

Judge Hamilton said her broad injunction was justified given NSO’s “multiple design-arounds” used to infect WhatsApp users — including missed phone calls and “zero-click” attacks — as well as the “covert nature” of the company’s work more generally.  (Aljazeera)