Meta Asks Court to Hold NSO Group in Contempt, Alleging Violations of WhatsApp Injunction

Meta said WhatsApp detected and blocked spear-phishing attempts linked to NSO Group that targeted a small number of users in Jordan and Lebanon. The company also reported that NSO created test accounts and groups on the platform. Meta stated that these actions breached the permanent injunction issued after an earlier lawsuit.

A federal court previously awarded Meta damages and barred NSO from targeting WhatsApp or its users. Meta said the new activity shows the injunction was violated and asked the court to find NSO in contempt. S.

Ownership. The firm developed the Pegasus spyware tool that exploited a WhatsApp vulnerability to extract messages, photos, and calls. Meta was awarded $167 million in damages in the initial court case against NSO last year.

A later case reduced the damages to $4 million. A permanent injunction was placed against NSO barring it from targeting WhatsApp and its users. John Scott Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, said the attempts signal hubris given the permanent court order.

He noted NSO may believe it can avoid consequences or evade detection. “To me, it’s an astonishing signal of hubris that NSO would do this while permanently enjoined from not doing it,” Railton said. Meta spokesperson Rachel Holland stated that WhatsApp cannot access encrypted communications and rejected contrary claims made in separate lawsuits.

“WhatsApp cannot access people’s encrypted communications and any suggestion to the contrary is false,” Holland said. NSO Group did not respond to a request for comment. S. S. ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021, as executive chair last autumn. Meta suggested earlier this year that NSO was linked to a lawsuit alleging Meta could read users’ encrypted WhatsApp messages.