Suzanne Smalley reports:
A federal judge on Friday ordered a major commercial spyware company to not target Meta’s WhatsApp messaging platform, which the firm had previously told the court could force it to shut down operations.
Phyllis Hamilton, U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of California, also cut the damages the spyware manufacturer, the NSO Group, will have to pay to Meta from $168 million to $4 million.
The ruling stems from a 2019 NSO hack of WhatsApp to target 1,400 app users with its zero-click Pegasus spyware.
The injunction could threaten NSO’s business because Pegasus relies on vulnerabilities in widely-used software like WhatsApp’s to target individuals.
Read more at The Record.