The metasuit against Israeli NSOs provided rare insight into the world of cyberepion
By Raphael Sutter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Israel’s NSO group received a $168 million penalty from a federal ju apprentice in California on Tuesday to hijack WhatsApp’s servers to hack users of meta-owned chat platforms on behalf of foreign spy agencies. The case holds back a six-year battle between the American social media giant and the surveillance company. It also throws an extraordinary amount of light on the inner workings of the spyware industry.
This is what we learned:
Top-class spyware isn’t cheap
Between 2018 and 2020, the NSO charged European government customers a “standard price” of $7 million to use the platform to hack 15 different devices, according to Sarit Bizinsky Gil, NSO’s vice president of global business operations. Executives said the ability to hack phones outside of the customer’s country is a separate add-on worth about $1 million or $2 million.
“It’s a very sophisticated product,” Meta Attorney Antonio Perez told the court in his opening statement.
NSO hacked thousands of devices
Between 2018 and 2020, Israeli spyware companies were responsible for infiltrating thousands of devices, according to Tamir Gazneli, Vice President of Research and Development at the NSO. During the trial, Gaznelli opposed the idea that his company sold “spyware,” saying it would lead to a trade in Perez, who claimed that his company’s tools were used to gather intelligence about the target.
“Don’t you consider Mr. Gasneli, the target people?” Perez asked him.
“That’s not what I said,” he replied. “What I said is that the target is intelligence targets of intelligence agencies.”
American taxpayers have sent millions of money to NSO funding
Court records show that the Central Intelligence and Federal Investigations have paid $7.6 million, collectively the NSO. Previous transactions with Israeli spyware company have been previously disclosed by the New York Times. This stated that the CIA bankrolled the purchase of Djibouti’s NSO spyware and bought it for testing, but the exams put a price tag on the relationship.
NSO targeted WhatsApp infrastructure during the lawsuit
The lawsuit against the NSO did not stop spyware companies from continuing to abuse WhatsApp’s infrastructure, Mehta’s lawyers said in court documents filed last month.
“The NSO repeatedly targeted the plaintiff, the plaintiff’s servers and the plaintiff’s mobile clients, even after this case was filed,” the filing said.