In the United States, a court ordered the creators of the Pegasus spyware to pay 168 million to WhatsApp for hacking into activist accounts.

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In the United States, a court ordered the creators of the Pegasus spyware program to pay $168 million to WhatsApp for hacking activist accounts.

This decision was the first time in history that a court found a company selling spy technologies guilty of a cyber attack on a private platform, Roskomsvoboda notes . The Israeli company NSO Group, which created Pegasus, was accused of illegally accessing WhatsApp systems and distributing malware without the user's knowledge. A district court in Northern California ruled that NSO violated federal and state hacking laws as well as WhatsApp's terms of service. The court ordered NSO Group to pay $168 million to Meta Corporation.

The human rights group Access Now called the company to account back in 2019, when more than a hundred Pegasus attacks against civil society representatives were revealed. Malicious code penetrated devices through an incoming call, even if the user did not answer it. In addition to activists, more than 1,400 WhatsApp users were hacked.

Meta filed a lawsuit against NSO in October 2019. During the proceedings, it turned out that NSO's sister structure, Westbridge, also offered Pegasus to American law enforcement agencies. NSO officials claimed that the software was being used to track terrorists and pedophiles. However, the firm has been implicated in surveillance abuses around the world, including in Saudi Arabia, Spain, Mexico, Poland and El Salvador.

“Espionage by an authoritarian state not only damages your professional relationships, but also narrows your social circle,” former Moroccan journalist Aboubakr Jamai testified : “You put your family and friends at risk simply by speaking freely to them on the phone.”

Attacks using Pegasus also affected Russian-speaking and Belarusian activists:k. In 2023, four Russian journalists reported that they had received notifications from Apple about a possible attack on their devices. Meduza publisher Galina Timchenko, general director of Novaya Gazeta Europe Maria Epifanova, Novaya Gazeta Baltia correspondent Evgeniy Pavlov and ex-editor of the Current Time TV channel Evgeniy Erlikh, who were working in Latvia at that time, received identical notifications. From August 2020 to January 2023, Pegasus spyware was also installed on the phones of Belarusian journalist Natalia Radina, Belarusian opposition leader Andrei Sannikov, and two unnamed activists from Russia and Belarus.