The infamous NSO Group Pegasus was used to target 1,223 WhatsApp users in 51 different countries during a 2019 hacking campaign, according to a new judicial document.
The document was published on Friday as part of a lawsuit owned by WhatsApp owned by Meta was raised against the NSO Group in 2019, accusing the supervision technology manufacturer of using a chat app to target hundreds of users, including more than 100 human rights activists, journalists and “other civil society members.”
At that time, WhatsApp said about 1,400 users were targeted. Now, an exhibition published in the court document shows exactly that countries 1,223 specific victims were located when they were targeted by Pegasus Spyware of NSO Group.
Separation of the country is a rare overview in which NGO group clients can be more active, and where their victims and objectives are located.
The places with the largest victims of this campaign are Mexico with 456 individuals, India with 100, Bahrain with 82, Morocco with 69, Pakistan with 58, Indonesia with 54, and Israel with 51, according to a chart “Country Country Counting”, which WhatsApp presented as part of the case.
There are also casualties in Western countries such as Spain (12 victims), the Netherlands (11), Hungary (8), France (7), the United Kingdom (2) and one victim in the United States.
The court’s list of victims from the country was first reported by the Israeli Ctech news site.
“Numerous news articles have been written over the years by documenting the use of Pegasus to target victims around the world,” said Runa Sandvik, an internet security expert who is following the victims of government spyware for years.
“What is often missing from these articles is the true degree of target-number of victims who were not notified; who did not control their equipment; who decided not to share their history publicly. The list we see here-with 456 cases in Mexico alone, a country with documented, well-known civil society,” Techcrch.
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Another part of the data showing the degree of the government’s spy problem is that the hacker campaign aimed at WhatsApp users occurred over a period of just two months, “between and around April 2019 and May 2019”, as WhatsApp wrote in its original complaint.
In other words, in just two months, NSO government clients aimed at more than a thousand WhatsApp users.
It is important to note that it is not clear whether the fact that there is a victim located in a particular country means that the specific country government was the client using the NSO Group Spyware against those victims. It is possible that a government client can use Pegasus to target someone abroad.
As Ctech noted, Syria appears on the victim’s list, but the NSO group cannot export its technology to Syria, a place sanctioned by countries around the world.
The number of victims also gives an overview of who can be customers with the highest salary of the NSO group. Companies like the NSO Group, and other ancestors such as Hacking Team and Finisler, determine what price to provide their supervision products to their customers in part by the number of objectives that can be infected simultaneously with Spyware.
For example, Mexico was reported to have spent more than $ 60 million in the group’s SPYWARE, according to a 2023 New York Times article that mentioned Mexican officials, who could explain why there are so many Mexican objectives on the list.
Last year, WhatsApp scored a historic victory when the judge chaired the lawsuit ruled that the NSO group had violated US hacker laws aiming at WhatsApp users. The next step in the lawsuit is a future session that will determine the damage the spyware manufacturer will have to pay whatsapp.
In addition to this list of victims, the court case brought by WhatsApp has led to other discoveries, including the fact that the NSO group broke off 10 government clients after reporting that they abused Spyware, and that the WhatsApp Hakim Manufactured by NSO Group costs up to $ 6.8 million for a total of $ 31 million. 2019. ”
WhatsApp Zade Alsawah spokesman refused to comment. The NSO group did not respond to a comment request.
