Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.WhatsApp has prevailed against Israeli spyware maker NSO Group in a US lawsuit over NSO\u2019s abuse of the messaging app to enable the infiltration of the phones of journalists, activists and dissidents with its Pegasus hacking tool.\u00a0A judge in the Northern District of California ruled on Friday that NSO breached hacking laws and the terms of its service agreement with WhatsApp by using the messaging platform to inject more than 1,000 devices with its Pegasus spyware.\u00a0The ruling in the civil case did not address the rights of the individuals whose phones had been hacked, but it hands a victory to technology groups seeking to prevent their platforms from being abused by groups targeting their users. It is also a win for Apple, Amazon and other tech giants that supported WhatsApp\u2019s case.\u00a0\u201cThe court finds no merit in the arguments raised\u201d by NSO Group, judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled. The summary judgment means an upcoming trial will cover only the question of damages, rather than whether NSO can be held liable for its actions. \u201cAfter five years of litigation, we\u2019re grateful for today\u2019s decision,\u201d WhatsApp said. \u201cNSO can no longer avoid accountability for their unlawful attacks on WhatsApp, journalists, human rights activists and civil society.\u201d\u00a0NSO Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u00a0Pegasus can read encrypted messages stored on a phone, turn on its camera and microphone remotely and track its location. Its use has been tied to human rights abuses and the US Department of Commerce has blacklisted the Israeli company.\u00a0The legal case was launched after a 2019 Financial Times report that coincided with WhatsApp\u2019s discovery that its services had been hacked by NSO and Pegasus.\u00a0The ruling said NSO Group did not dispute that it \u201cmust have reverse-engineered and\/or decompiled the WhatsApp software\u201d in order to hack phones, but had raised the possibility that it did so before agreeing to WhatsApp\u2019s terms of service.\u00a0However, the judge found, \u201ccommon sense dictates that [NSO] must have first gained access\u201d to the WhatsApp software and NSO had offered \u201cno plausible explanation\u201d for how it could have done so without agreeing to the terms of service. It ruled in favour of WhatsApp\u2019s claim that NSO had violated federal and state hacking laws.\u00a0The judge also found that NSO had \u201crepeatedly failed to produce relevant discovery\u201d, including in relation to the Pegasus source code. \u201cThis sets a precedent that will be cited for years to come,\u201d said John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto\u2019s Citizen Lab who has investigated the use of Pegasus.\u00a0\u201cThis is the most-watched case about mercenary spyware and everyone is going to take note. I predict this will have a chilling effect on other shady spyware companies\u2019 efforts to enter the US market, and investors\u2019 interest in backing their hacking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.WhatsApp has prevailed against Israeli spyware maker NSO Group in a US lawsuit over NSO\u2019s abuse of the messaging app to enable the infiltration of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-149907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}