Feed: Slashdot
Feed Link: https://slashdot.org/
---

Title: NSO Group Must Pay More Than $167 Million In Damages To WhatsApp For
Spyware Campaign

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/05/06/21362...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Spyware maker NSO Group
will have to pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for a 2019
hacking campaign against more than 1,400 users. On Tuesday, after a five-year
legal battle, a jury ruled that NSO Group must pay $167,256,000 in punitive
damages and around $444,719 in compensatory damages. This is a huge legal win
for WhatsApp, which had asked for more than $400,000 in compensatory damages,
based on the time its employees had to dedicate to remediate the attacks,
investigate them, and push fixes to patch the vulnerability abused by NSO
Group, as well as unspecified punitive damages. The trial, as well as the
whole lawsuit, prompted a series of revelations, such as the location of the
victims of the 2019 spyware campaign, as well as the names of some of NSO
Group's customers. The ruling marks the end -- pending a potential appeal --
of a legal battle that started in more than five years ago, when WhatsApp
filed a lawsuit against the spyware maker. The Meta-owned company accused NSO
Group of accessing WhatsApp servers and exploiting an audio-calling
vulnerability in the chat app to target around 1,400 people, including
dissidents, human rights activists, and journalists. NSO Group's spokesperson
Gil Lainer left the door open for an appeal. "We will carefully examine the
verdict's details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further
proceedings and an appeal," Lainer said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

---
VRSS v2.1.180528