El Salvador investigative journalists sue spyware maker in U.S. federal court
NBCAPR 20 2023
Swarn depositions from a lawsuit between Meta-owned WhatsApp and Israeli spyware firm NSO Group show that NSO is the one that "installs and extracts" people's mobile phone data, not its government clients.
WhatsApp, which first sued NSO in 2019 over allegations that its Pegasus software hacked 1.4K users, said NSO admitted to "extracting and decompiling WhatsApp's code" and "reverse-engineering WhatsApp" to bypass security measures and insert "zero-click" spyware.
WhatsApp claims that NSO's head of research and development "confirmed" that its "zero-click vector called 'Eden,'" which was part of a "family of WhatsApp-based vectors" called "Hummingbird," was "responsible for the attacks described in the complaint."
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