A American judge issued an order that prohibits to the Israeli spyware maker NSO Group attack users WhatsAppbut reduced the damages award from $168 million to just $4 million.
The district judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled that NSO Group’s behavior did not rise to the level of “particularly serious” necessary to support the jury’s calculations of a economic sanction.
In it opinionto which AFP had access, the court “concluded that the conduct of the accused cause a irreparable damageand since it is not disputed that this conduct continues” he granted Goalowner of WhatsApp, a court order to stop the spy tactics of NSO Group in the courier service.
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“We applaud this decision, which comes after six years of litigation to hold NSO accountable for attacking members of civil society,” he said in a statement. Will CathcartCEO of WhatsApp.
Evidence presented at trial showed that NSO Group reverse engineered WhatsApp code to stealthily install spyware aimed at the usersaccording to the ruling, which described access to user data as “illegal.”
US judge sentences NSO Group for cyberespionage (10/17/2025). Photo: Special
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The court concluded that the spyware was repeatedly redesigned to evade detection and circumvent WhatsApp security fixes. The demandfiled in late 2019, accused NSO Group of cyber espionage addressed to journalists, lawyers, activists rights activists and others who used the encrypted messaging service.
However, the judge ruled that the compensation damages award of $168 million awarded to Meta earlier this year was excessive.
“There have simply not yet been enough cases of illegal electronic surveillance in the smartphone era for the court to conclude that defendants’ conduct was ‘particularly egregious,'” the judge wrote in the ruling.
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NSO Group was founded in 2010 by Israelis Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie. It is based in the technology center coastal of Herzliyanear Tel Aviv.
The media website TechCrunch reported on Friday that a US investment group has acquired a majority stake in NSO Group.
The Israeli company produces Pegasusa highly invasive tool that can reportedly turn on the camera and microphone of a target’s cell phone and access the data it contains, effectively turning the phone into a pocket spy.
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The lawsuit filed in federal court California alleged that NSO attempted to infect approximately 1,400 “target devices” with malware to steal valuable information.
Infect phones intelligent or others devices used to send WhatsApp messages meant that the content of the messages could be accessed encrypted messages during transmission after they were decrypted.
Independent experts have noted that Pegasus software is used by States, some of them with a poor track record on human rights. NSO Group has maintained that it only licenses its software to governments for the fight against crime and terrorism.
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