Facebook sues Israel’s NSO on alleged WhatsApp malware hack
INTERNATIONAL – WhatsApp and its parent Facebook Inc. sued spyware manufacturer NSO Group, alleging that the Israeli company used malware to hack into the mobile phones of 1,400 people and conduct surveillance.
Between January 2018 and May of this year, NSO created WhatsApp accounts that it used to send malicious code to targeted devices, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco. The bogus accounts were created using telephone numbers registered in different countries, including Cyprus, Israel, Brazil, Indonesia, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Between roughly April 29 and May 10, NSO unleashed its code over WhatsApp servers targeting attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and other senior foreign government officials, the suit said.
While NSO was unable to break WhatsApp’s encryption, the company developed its malware to access messages and other communications after they were decrypted on the targeted devices.
Source: iol.co.za