The NSO Group, which belongs to Israel, didn’t love the news of getting a mega $168 million penalty for hijacking servers belonging to WhatsApp. However, that did open up a new insight into the world of foreign spy agencies and their dealings.
The is a six-year-long battle between American social media giants and the surveillance organization. It has also cast a major amount of attention on the inner world of spyware and how it works.
We can confirm that top-of-the-line spyware does not come cheap. A standard price was shared of nearly $7 million for utilizing the platform to hack nearly 15 devices in a single go. As per the executive, hacking phones outside a client’s nation is never easy and comes with an additional price tag between $1 and to 2 million.
The product is sophisticated, Meta shared during its opening statement inside the courtroom. The price tag is hefty, and thousands of products were hacked through the system. More stats revealed how the spyware broke into devices of thousands of people between 2018 to 2020 without them realizing anything.
Even during the legal proceedings, the company failed to admit that it did anything wrong. They just spoke about breaking into devices that fell in the thousands range, and also failed to admit the firm was selling spyware. Instead, they were portrayed as gathering intelligence on specific targets but not certain individuals.
To summarize the case, the NSO Group received a fine worth $168 million for hacking the world’s most popular texting platform without users knowing. The group charged governments in the EU millions for the platform, and that includes top agencies like the CIA and the FBI, who paid a whopping $7.6 million. The NSO continued to attack the app during the lawsuit, which just goes to show their lack of care and consideration.
Controversial reports from the NYT shared more on this front, including how the CIA bankrolled the purchase of the software, which is another chapter altogether. But Meta refused to back down and made sure it was punished for its wrongdoing.
This filing puts a permanent injunction regarding the NSO and how it is a major threat of ongoing and serious harm to tech giant Meta, the app, and many of its users.
Image: DIW-Aigen
Read next: New Documents Expose Meta's Complex AI Filters for Sensitive Content, Testing Boundaries of Safety
The is a six-year-long battle between American social media giants and the surveillance organization. It has also cast a major amount of attention on the inner world of spyware and how it works.
We can confirm that top-of-the-line spyware does not come cheap. A standard price was shared of nearly $7 million for utilizing the platform to hack nearly 15 devices in a single go. As per the executive, hacking phones outside a client’s nation is never easy and comes with an additional price tag between $1 and to 2 million.
The product is sophisticated, Meta shared during its opening statement inside the courtroom. The price tag is hefty, and thousands of products were hacked through the system. More stats revealed how the spyware broke into devices of thousands of people between 2018 to 2020 without them realizing anything.
Even during the legal proceedings, the company failed to admit that it did anything wrong. They just spoke about breaking into devices that fell in the thousands range, and also failed to admit the firm was selling spyware. Instead, they were portrayed as gathering intelligence on specific targets but not certain individuals.
To summarize the case, the NSO Group received a fine worth $168 million for hacking the world’s most popular texting platform without users knowing. The group charged governments in the EU millions for the platform, and that includes top agencies like the CIA and the FBI, who paid a whopping $7.6 million. The NSO continued to attack the app during the lawsuit, which just goes to show their lack of care and consideration.
Controversial reports from the NYT shared more on this front, including how the CIA bankrolled the purchase of the software, which is another chapter altogether. But Meta refused to back down and made sure it was punished for its wrongdoing.
This filing puts a permanent injunction regarding the NSO and how it is a major threat of ongoing and serious harm to tech giant Meta, the app, and many of its users.
Read next: New Documents Expose Meta's Complex AI Filters for Sensitive Content, Testing Boundaries of Safety
