WhatsApp CEO says they had recorded an attack against 1,400 users over a two-week period in 2019, casting doubts on NSO's defense against Pegasus project claims
The GuardianStephanie Kirchgaessner
Context & Ripple Effects
WhatsApp had already turned its investigation into a legal confrontation with its 2019 lawsuit against NSO, alleging malware delivery to roughly 1,400 devices and targeting of human-rights defenders and journalists. The CEO’s account gives the dispute a defined two-week attack window rather than leaving it solely at a broad allegation.
NSO’s defense against the Pegasus Project allegations faces a more concrete counterclaim from WhatsApp: the platform says it recorded a coordinated 2019 attack affecting 1,400 users.
WhatsApp gains a clearer factual account to support its position that Pegasus activity reached its users at scale.
Second-order effects
The dispute shifts attention from individual alleged targets to the operational trail behind the campaign, including WhatsApp’s claim that US-based servers were used to direct malware.
NSO’s customers and defenders face greater pressure to distinguish claimed lawful use from a campaign WhatsApp says affected journalists, activists, and other civil-society users.
Third-order effects
If platform telemetry and infrastructure evidence become central to spyware cases, commercial surveillance vendors will face a more durable accountability channel through the services their products must traverse.
The episode points to ecosystem cyber defense becoming a legal as well as technical contest, with messaging platforms positioned to document and challenge targeted spyware operations.
The trend: Commercial spyware scrutiny is moving from disputed reports of individual targets toward platform-recorded evidence, infrastructure claims, and litigation-driven accountability.
NSO Group tries to pin the blame on investigations uncovering their complicity in human rights abuses on BDS. Recall that this was the gist of what they paid Black Cube to trick Citizen Lab's @jsrailton into saying. https://www.vice.com/...
Some imp take-aways from WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart's interview with the #PegasusProject. 1) Govt officials were part of the 2019 NSO attack that WhatsApp fended off. So far, we've only had confirmation that activists/lawyers/journalists were a part of it. https://thewire.in/...
2) Our reporting broadly matches with what he saw in 2019. Range, scope etc. NSO has said a list of 50k numbers is too much. Cathcart says that in 2019, they saw attacks on 1,400 people over couple weeks. If you multiply that across years, that adds up. https://thewire.in/...
Israel's dominance in cybersecurity didn't occur in a vacuum. The country's intelligence & covert operations divisions, especially its Mossad have long had a storied reputation for engaging in cunning, daring & ruthless espionage, burnished by Hollywood. https://cnn.com/...
Thrust of #PegasusProject validated: Whatsapp CEO @wcatchcart confirms nature of some targeting we saw in leaked database, says 50k-sized list in line with what they saw in 2 wk window. And US court says NSO ‘retained some role’ in operation of Pegasus. https://thewire.in/...
Anyone who has lived through Bombay's gang-war years knows FB Vs NSO is just that. Two equally evil parties have pissed each other off. I hope we dont forget that the ordinary people who've been killed or jailed are the only victims in this terrible saga. #PegasusProject https://…
Facebook-owned WhatsApp sued NSO for targeting their users. In court, NSO countered, “In 2017, Facebook executives reached to NSO to ask for help in tracking the habits of iPhone users, including which apps they used and how much time they spent on them.” https://www.washingtonpo…
There are growing calls from both inside Israel as well as in the international community about how better to regulate the cyber-espionage market. https://www.cnn.com/...
Surveillance capitalism company tried to enlist literal zero-day exploits used by state spy agencies to better surveil. I guess when all you've got is a very profitable hammer... https://twitter.com/...
3) Finally, the WhatsApp CEO calls for more discussion: “NSO Group claims that a large number of governments are buying their software... Should they stop? Should there be a discussion about which governments were paying for this software? https://thewire.in/...
“If this is affecting journalists all around the world, this is affecting human rights defenders all around the world, that affects us all. And if anyone's phone is not secured that means everyone's phone is not secure,” says @wcathcart. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
Head of WhatsApp @wcathcart tells @skirchy that #PegasusProject revelations are consistent with 2019 WhatsApp breach by NSO Group: “The reporting matches what we saw in the attack we defeated two years ago.” https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
36. BIG DEAL: today @WhatsApp CEO @wcathcart *publicly confirmed* that senior national security officials of US allies🇺🇸 were targeted with #Pegasus spyware in 2019. Clear message: #NSOGroup spyware is a national security threat. By @skirchy https://www.theguardian.com/ ... https…
“Senior govt officials around the world - including individuals in high national security positions who are “allies of the US” - were targeted by governments with NSO Group spyware in a 2019 attack against 1,400 WhatsApp users.” https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
This Pegasus story isn't getting as much play in US media but overseas folks are getting all worked up over it. Spent an hour w/@johnmccumber for upcoming @HeardTellShow. He explains who is to blame, who is doing CYA, & please stop using “hacked”. K. Thx. https://www.theguardian.…
NSO Group is now blaming Palestinian activists—and Qatar—for the series of stories published this week detailing alleged abuses of its technology all over the world. https://www.vice.com/...
“I don't want to sound cynical now, but there are those who don't want [Israel] to import ice cream or export technologies.” — well, that's a truly impressive argument to deploy. How can no one be unconvinced? https://www.vice.com/...
NSO is easily one of the most hated companies with information security folks I know for how its tech ended up targeting civil society. Not sure that trying to shift blame without a shred of evidence is going to do the trick. https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/...
NSO CEO also said said that “everyone just focuses on Israelis.” But researchers from Amnesty, Citizen Lab, as well as countless media outlets have covered competitors Hacking Team (🇮🇹), FinFisher (🇩🇪), Wolf Intelligence (🇮🇳) etc, for literally a decade. https://www.vice.com/...
NSO coating itself in nationalistic b***s**t. This is not about them providing spyware to abhorrent regimes which have used it to kill innocent people. It's a Palestinian (or Qatar) conspiracy to ruin one of Israel's most successful businesses. [eyeroll] https://twitter.com/...