Following revelation that NSO Group’s ‘Pegasus’ software may have been used to snoop on journalists, politicians and activists worldwide, including 300 Indian numbers, WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart has called on governments and companies to take steps to hold the Israeli technology firm accountable.
"NSO's dangerous spyware is used to commit horrible human rights abuses all around the world, and it must be stopped," he asserted.
WhatsApp had in 2019 sued the NSO Group, accusing it of using its messaging service to conduct cyberespionage on roughly 1.400 user accounts, including of journalists and human rights activists.
In a series of tweets, Cathcart has put forward some points and defended how WhatsApp in 2019 fought back against the tool from NSO. "In 2019, WhatsApp discovered and defeated an attack from NSO. They rely on unknown vulnerabilities in mobile OSes, which is one of the reasons why we felt it was so important to raise awareness of what we'd found," he tweeted.
“This is a wake- up call for security on the internet. The mobile phone is the primary computer for billions of people. Governments and companies must do everything they can to make it as secure as possible. Our security and freedom depend on it,” Cathcart said in another tweet.
He added that there is a need for more companies, and, critically, governments, to take steps to hold NSO Group accountable. “Once again, we urge a global moratorium on the use of unaccountable surveillance technology now. It’s past time,” he said. "That's why we continue to defend end-to-end encryption so tirelessly. To those who have proposed weakening end-to-end encryption: deliberately weakening security will have terrifying consequences for us all," Cathcart said.
Cathcart also lauded the efforts of Microsoft, Google, Cisco, VMWare, and more, who have spoken against the use of spyware tools by groups like NSO.
It exploited a known vulnerability, which WhatsApp fixed before it became public, to infiltrate Android and iOS devices of the targets. Months after spying cases were reported, WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO Group — the makers of Pegasus.
The Facebook-owned company also worked with the Internet watchdog Citizen Lab to identify more than 100 cases of abusive targeting of activists and journalists in over 20 countries.