The American technology giants have joined Facebook’s lawsuit against the Israeli offensive cyber company. Seek to prevent immunity from NSO due to its work with governments
NSO Management. Source: PR
These are not amazing days to be the Israeli offensive cyber company NSO Group. Earlier this week, the president of Microsoft attacked her and called her and other companies in the field of “21st century mercenaries”, yesterday it was alleged that she used security vulnerability in iOS to break into the phones of dozens of journalists and now several technology giants are joining the lawsuit.
Not her week
The battle between Facebook (the owner of WhatsApp) and NSO is gaining traction from a coalition of some of the largest technology companies in the world, which is joining a lawsuit against Israeli society. Among the companies in question are Microsoft, its subsidiaries – GitHub and LinkedIn; Google; Cisco and VMWare.
The lawsuit was also joined by the American Internet Association – which represents dozens of technology companies such as Amazon and Twitter – which warned against developing surveillance and spyware tools, along with maintaining a database of vulnerabilities and security vulnerabilities that allow them to run. According to the organization, such a situation makes the world more dangerous for the small citizen and carries greater risks such as getting these tools (and loopholes that allow them to run) into the wrong hands.
The request of the big companies now standing by Facebook’s side is to prevent the Israeli NSO from gaining immunity in court, a demand that has become its main line of defense after failing to have the lawsuit dismissed. The NSO argues that because the company works with governments it should gain immunity in a case against it.
“Cyber mercenaries do not deserve immunity”
In a blog post called “Cyber Mercenaries Are Not Immune”, Tom Brett, who is in charge of Microsoft’s customer security division, called for liability from NSO for the tools it manufactures and the vulnerabilities it exploits to run them.
“The immunity that NSO seeks to give will give impetus to the cyber surveillance industry to develop, sell and use tools to exploit security vulnerabilities – in violation of U.S. law. Private companies should be responsible when using their monitoring tools to break the law, or knowingly allow the use of these tools for such purposes (Breaking the Law, AA). We hope that standing together, alongside our competitors, will help protect all of our customers and the global digital ecosystem from further attacks, ”Brett wrote.
Summary of previous chapters
Facebook (and its subsidiary WhatsApp) sued the Israeli NSO in October last year, claiming that it used a security breach to install the attack tool it created – Pegasus – on no less than 1,400 different devices.
The severe breach in WhatsApp allegedly allowed the installer to install the spyware using the app’s voice calls feature. In a detailed lawsuit filed by Facebook in a California court, it claimed that NSO “developed a malware designed to reach messages and other messages after these were decrypted on the device.”
The method of attack, according to Facebook, was quite sophisticated and was carried out by a simple voice call via WhatsApp. In fact, the assault weapon was so sophisticated that the victim did not have to answer the call for the spy tool to be installed on his device. In addition, at times, the conversation was so short that the victim did not even have time to see that he had a conversation.
According to Facebook, among the victims of this attack were more than 100 human rights activists, journalists, government officials and diplomats. According to a report by the British Financial Times, there was also a failed attempted attack on the smartphone device of a British lawyer who assisted a number of human rights organizations, and even assisted in a lawsuit against NSO.
The NSO chose not to comment on the matter.
Oshri Alexelsi
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