WhatsApp CEO: ‘US allies officials’ were targeted by NSO spywareSO

WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart claims that Israeli NSO Group spyware was used against high-ranking government officials in 2019, among others. The chat service already spoke about the WhatsApp attack before, but is now giving more details about it.

In the attack, the smartphones of 1400 WhatsApp users were infected with spyware from the NSO Group. At least 100 users would be journalists or human rights activists. Now WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart tells The Guardian that government officials would also be affected. This would partly involve high-ranking officials who are involved in a country’s national security. These countries would be allies of the United States, although specific countries are not mentioned.

Cathcart speaks to the newspaper in light of the recent Pegasus revelations. An investigation by seventeen news organizations, including The Guardian, would show that Pegasus software from NSO Group was used to hack and track at least 37 journalists and human rights activists. The WhatsApp CEO says he sees ‘parallels’ between Pegasus and the spyware that has been used against WhatsApp. Both attacks followed people who “shouldn’t have been followed in any way,” Cathcart says.

NSO Group itself says that its spyware is only used against suspected criminals and terrorists. The company also says the 50,000 user list compiled by the news organizations is “exaggerated” and too large for the Pegasus spyware. The company would have a maximum of 45 customers with an average of about a hundred targets each. Cathcart says his chat service was able to identify 1,400 targets within two weeks. “That shows that the amount of individuals attacked over a period of several years must be very large,” Cathcart said. According to Cathcart, the list of fifty thousand users does not have to be ‘excessively large’.