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| Facebook continues the lawsuit with WhatsApp hijackers |
Facebook attorneys stated in court documents that the NSO Group was a spyware development company accused of monitoring more than 1,000 WhatsApp users who used servers in the U.S. to launch attacks.
WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, claimed in court documents that the NSO Group used more than 700 servers operated by QuadraNet, a Los Angeles hosting company, to direct NSO malware to WhatsApp user users (May 2019).
Claudiu Gheorghe, WhatsApp developer, said the NSO group also uses a remote server hosted by Amazon to find WhatsApp users. These files dealt a blow to the NSO group's claim that its premium product Pegasus would not work. in the United States.
WhatsApp said: "In addition to the crime of unauthorized access under the Computer Fraud and Misuse Act, violations of WhatsApp servers and user devices also constitute an illegal breach."
These documents are the latest litigation activity on WhatsApp in the past year. WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against the NSO group last year, claiming that it suspected it spied on human rights defenders and journalists.
"These documents can weaken the argument that the National Bureau of Statistics has no operations in the United States," said John Scott Lalton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto Citizenship Laboratory, in a Tweet on Twitter.
"It is difficult for the NSO Group to reliably determine that there is no communication between the United States and its operations, and documents show that the NSO Group buys and operates pirated servers and is likely to make the business a single pirated service and not a software developer," the researchers added.
A spokesperson for the NSO Group said: "The NSO Group does not operate Pegasus for its customers in the United States and cannot be used for US mobile phone numbers or devices located within the geographical borders of the United States."
WhatsApp attorneys rejected the NSO group's argument that the case should be closed on the basis of the company's forensic technology and plans to defend itself under sovereign immunity. The proposal is to defend states to avoid civilian damage in other countries.
The NSO Group argued that the claims should be safe because its clients are governments that use their products for national security reasons, and WhatsApp attorneys said that the NSO Group did not find a specific government to serve it or only one of them stated that the contract or any evidence proving its limited role in the suit.
The documents say: "The accused accused the government of the unknown country. This statement did not work. The accused cannot rely on the persuasive immunities of his clients and must hold them accountable under the California lawsuit." Neither sovereign nor immunity nor deviate from the exercise of jurisdiction.