Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
PEGASUS PEGASUS of NSO Group was used to target 1,223 WhatsApp users in 51 different countries during the 2019 penetration campaign, according to 2019 A new court document.
The document was published on Friday as part of the description -owned lawsuit Festival WhatsApp against the NSO group In 2019, the Monitor of Monitoring Technology was accused of exploiting 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, a publication exhibition appears in the court document exactly in countries where there were 1222 specific victims when they were targeted NSO collectionPegasus Spyware.
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.
The countries that include 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 plans entitled “Count Count Count”, 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 Israeli news site CTECH.
“Several news articles have been written over the years to document Pegasus’s use to target victims around the world,” he said. Rona SandfikCyber security expert was Follow 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.”
Contact us
Do you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can connect to Lorenzo Franceschi-bicchierai safe Email. You can also call the techcrunch via Securedrop.
Another piece of data that shows a scale Government spy programs The problem is that the piracy campaign targeting WhatsApp users occurred only for two months, “Between about April 2019 and May 2019”, as Whatsapp wrote in it An 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 I noticed CTECH, Syria appears on the list of victims, but the NSO group cannot export its technology to Syria, which is a state Countries are punished all over 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.
For example, it was reported that Mexico has spent more than $ 60 million on NSO spyware, According to the article 2023 New York Times This was cited with Mexican officials, which can explain the reason for the presence of many Mexican goals in this list.
Last year, WhatsApp scored a historic victory When the judge who heads the case spent that the NSO group had violated the laws of our penetration 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 presented by WhatsApp It has led to the other revelationIncluding the fact that NSO Group cut 10 government agents after reports that they have misused spyware, and that the WhatsApp penetration tool produced by NSO GROUP cost up to $ 6.8 million for one year license, which the company’s total was at least 31 million dollars in revenue in 2019. “
WhatsApp Zade Alsawah’s spokesperson rejected the comment. The NSO group did not respond to the comment request.