Facebook-owned
WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit against Israel's NSO Group, alleging the firm was
behind cyber-attacks that infected devices with malicious software.
WhatsApp
accuses the company of sending malware to roughly 1,400 mobile phones for the
purposes of surveillance.
Users
affected included journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents,
and diplomats.
NSO
Group, which makes software for surveillance, disputed the allegations.
In a
court filing, WhatsApp said NSO Group "developed their malware in order to
access messages and other communications after they were decrypted on target
devices".
It
said NSO Group created various WhatsApp accounts and caused the malicious code
to be transmitted over the WhatsApp servers in April and May.
"We
believe this attack targeted at least 100 members of civil society, which is an
unmistakable pattern of abuse," WhatsApp said in a statement.
The
affected users had numbers from several countries, including Bahrain, the
United Arab Emirates and Mexico, according to the lawsuit.
WhatsApp
said it is seeking a permanent injunction banning NSO from using its service.
The
firm, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014, said it was the first time an
encrypted messaging provider had taken legal action of this kind.
WhatsApp
promotes itself as a "secure" communications app because messages are
end-to-end encrypted. This means they should only be displayed in a legible
form on the sender or recipient's device.
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