Court document reveals locations of WhatsApp victims targeted by NSO spyware

PEGASUS was used from NSO Group Pegasus to target 1,223 WhatsApp user in 51 different countries during the 2019 penetration campaign, according to a new court document.

The document was published on Friday as part of the lawsuit that the description -owned WhatsApp was submitted against NSO Group in 2019, accusing the Monitor of Monitoring Technology to exploit the security vulnerability in the chat application to target hundreds of users, including more than 100 human rights activists, journalists and “other members of civil society”.

At that time, WhatsApp said that about 1,400 users were targeted. Now, an exhibition published in the court document exactly appears in countries where there were 1223 specific victims when they were targeted with Pegasus Spy’s NSO Group programs.

The country’s collapse is a rare vision that the NSO group customers may be more active in it, and where their victims and goals are.

Countries that include most of the 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 the graphic entitled “The Number of Cases Number of Countries”, presented by WhatsApp as part of the case.

There are also victims in Western countries such as Spain (12 victims), the Netherlands (11), Hungary (8), France (7) and the United Kingdom (2) and one victim in the United States.

The court document was reported with the list of victims by the country for the first time by the Israeli news website CTECH.

“Several news articles have been written over the years to document PEGASU’s use to target victims all over the world,” said Rawana Sandfik, a cybersecurity expert who follows the victims of government spyware for years.

“What often lacks these articles is the true size of targeting-the number of victims who have not been notified; whose devices have not been examined; who chose not to share their story publicly. The list we see here-with 456 cases in Mexico alone, is a state with well-known civil victims-talking about the true size of the swimming material.”

Another part of the data that shows the size of the problem of government spyware is that the piracy campaign targeting WhatsApp users occurred only two months, “Between April 2019 and May 2019,” WHATSAPP wrote in his original complaint.

In other words, in just two months, the NSO Group agents targeted more than a thousand WhatsApp users.

It is important to note that it is not clear whether there is a victim in a specific country that means that the government of a particular country was the customer who used NSO spyware against these victims. A government agent is likely to use PEGASUS to target someone outside the country.

As she noticed CTECH, Syria appears on the list of victims, but NSO GROUP cannot export its technology to Syria, a country that countries have punishable around the world.

The number of victims also gives an insightful look at who NSO customers may be the most payable. Companies such as NSO Group, and other sulfate such as Hacking Team and Finfisher are determined by the price that monitors are partially provided to their customers through the number of goals that can suffer spy tools simultaneously.

It was reported that Mexico, for example, spent more than $ 60 million on the NSO spyware, according to an article in the New York Times 2023, which cited Mexican officials, which can explain the reason for the presence of many Mexican goals in this list.

Last year, WhatsApp recorded a historic victory when the judge who headed the lawsuit spent that the NSO group had violated the penetration laws by targeting WhatsApp users. The next step in the lawsuit is a upcoming listening session that will determine the damage that the spyware maker will pay the WhatsApp.

Regardless of this list of victims, the case of the court submitted by WhatsApp has led to another statement, including the fact that NSO Group dismantled 10 government agents after reports that they have offended spyware, and that the WhatsApp penetration tool produced by NSO Group Calce reaches $ 6.8 million for one year license, which is in the total at least from $ 31 million in revenue in 2019.

WhatsApp Zade Alsawah’s spokesperson rejected the comment. The NSO group did not respond to the comment request.