INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A jury has awarded WhatsApp $167 million in punitive damages in a case the company brought against Israel-based NSO Group for exploiting a
software vulnerability that hijacked the phones of thousands of users.The verdict, reached Tuesday, comes as a major victory not just for
Meta-owned WhatsApp but also for privacy- and security-rights advocates who have long criticized the practices of NSO and other exploit
The jury also awarded WhatsApp $444 million in compensatory damages.WhatsApp sued NSO in 2019 for an attack that targeted roughly 1,400
mobile phones belonging to attorneys, journalists, human-rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and senior foreign government
NSO, which works on behalf of governments and law enforcement authorities in various countries, exploited a critical WhatsApp vulnerability
The clickless exploit worked by placing a call to a target's app
WhatsApp said in a statement
accounts in 2018 and used them a year later to initiate calls that exploited the critical vulnerability on phones, which, among others,
included 100 members of "civil society" from 20 countries, according to an investigation research group Citizen Lab performed on behalf of
The calls passed through WhatsApp servers and injected malicious code into the memory of targeted devices
The targeted phones would then use WhatsApp servers to connect to malicious servers maintained by NSO.
