NSO Group is entirely responsible for operating Pegasus spyware, not customers
New court documents in WhatsApp’s ongoing legal battle against the Israeli spyware maker reveal details of the hacking operations.
Newly released, unredacted court documents have shed new light on the operations of Israeli spyware maker NSO Group.
According to unredacted depositions from several NSO Group employees filed overnight by WhatsApp as part of its ongoing litigation against the company, NSO Group itself is responsible for operating its Pegasus spyware on behalf of its customers, and not of the customers themselves, as was previously thought. .
According to Josh Shaner, a former employee of Westbridge, NSO’s US subsidiary, a customer “only had to enter the target device number and ‘hit install, and Pegasus will install the agent on the device remotely without any commitment.
“The rest,” Shaner said, “is done automatically by the system.”
WhatsApp said in its filing: “In other words, the customer simply places an order for data from a target device, and NSO controls all aspects of the data retrieval and delivery process through its Pegasus design . »
Yaron Shohat, CEO and COO of NSO at the time Pegasus was used to infect the devices of 1,400 WhatsApp users in 2019, was also removed. According to WhatsApp’s filing, he admitted that “the actual process of installing Pegasus via WhatsApp was ‘a matter for NSO and the system to take care of, not a matter for customers to handle.’
This new twist is the latest revelation in the ongoing legal battle between WhatsApp and the NSO group. In July, a series of documents leaked by the Israeli Justice Ministry revealed disturbing information about ties between the Israeli government and spyware maker NSO Group.
The leaked data revealed that the Israeli Justice Ministry seized the documents before they could be shared with the US court as part of the discovery process. The Justice Department also issued a mandate of silence to keep the seizure secret.
According to the website Forbidden Stories, the leaked documents show “that in 2020, NSO’s legal team believed that sensitive documents, such as its entire client list, including ‘U.S. clients,’ contracts, or information related to ‘hacking or hacking of Jeff Bezos’ Khashoggi’s murder could be among the files likely to fall under discovery.
Donncha Ó Cearbhaill of Amnesty International’s Security Lab said at the time that the documents “call into question Israel’s commitment to impartially regulating the NSO Group and cast doubt on its ability to provide justice.” , truth and reparation to those affected by Pegasus spyware.
