Facebook Submits Detailed Proof of NSO Group’s WhatsApp Hacking
Apr. 27, 2020Facebook has submitted detailed proof in the court about the Israeli company NSO Group and its allegedly hacking into at least 1,400 WhatsApp users last year via its controversial surveillance softwarePegasus.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Facebook’s legal brief said“it was exposing a massive NSO attack infrastructure operating in the US, in direct contradiction of NSO’s defenses, under the guise of third parties”.
According to Facebook, its attacks on WhatsApp users “were hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the US and by the Californian company QuadraNet (with a German provider)”.
According to the report on Sunday, new revelations could make it harder for NSO Group to continue to deny any US operations. NSO responded to the new Facebook legal brief, saying that“Our products are used to stop terrorism, curb violent crime, and save lives.”
“NSO Group does not operate the Pegasus software for its clients, nor can it be used against US mobile phone numbers, or against a device within the geographic bounds of the United States.”
NSO has denied the allegations on WhatsApp hacking in the past.
A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the NSO CEO is misrepresenting conversations between the company and Facebook employees.
“NSO is trying to distract from the facts Facebook and WhatsApp filed in court over six months ago. Their attempt to avoid responsibility includes inaccurate representations about both their spyware and a discussion with people who work at Facebook,”the spokesperson said.
NSO has maintained that it sells Pegasus only to intelligence and law enforcement agency clients. Facebook has evenblamed Apple’s operating systemfor the hacking of Amazon Founder and CEOJeff Bezos’phone.
Investigators believe that Bezos’s iPhone was compromised after he received a 4.4MB video file containing malware via WhatsApp — in the same way when phones of 1,400 select people including journalists and human rights activists were broken into by Pegasus software from NSO Group last year.
In an interview to the BBC, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, has said it wasn’t WhatsApp’s fault because end-to-end encryption is unhackable and blamed Apple’s operating system for Bezos’ episode. The NSO Group has denied it was part of Bezos’ hacking.
