Facebook is suing the Israeli hacker-for-hire company NSO Group for allegedly targeting some 1,400 users of its encrypted messaging service WhatsApp with highly sophisticated spyware. The lawsuit filed in San Francisco is the first legal action of its kind, according to Facebook, involving a nearly totally unregulated realm. He said that since discovering the malware operation in May, Facebook learned the attackers were using servers and internet-hosting services previously associated with NSO Group. Facebook demands in the suit that NSO Group be denied access to Facebook’s services and systems and seeks unspecified damages. The lawsuit alleges that malicious code from NSO was sent from April 29 through May 10 over WhatsApp servers.

Source: The Irish Times October 30, 2019 06:50 UTC