New details have been revealed about the WhatsApp hack that took place earlier this year, revealing that senior government officials from several allied countries in the United States have been targeted, according to those who knew about the company's investigation.
Sources close to the Facebook company's internal investigation said a "significant" portion of the known hacking victims are high-ranking military or government figures in at least 20 countries on five continents.
This means that the WhatsApp hack could have much broader political and diplomatic consequences than expected.
WhatsApp recently filed a lawsuit against the Israeli cyber intelligence group NSO Group, which believes it has built and sold a hacking platform that exploits a loophole in its servers to allow the company to recover money. other users to hack smartphones of at least 1.400 users of the company's email application.
cyber espionage
At the moment, it is not yet clear who used the NSO Group's software to hack the smartphones of government and military officials, but the company said it was selling its spyware exclusively to government clients.
According to people familiar with the investigation, some victims are in the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Mexico, Pakistan and India. A dozen journalists and human rights activists in India have also come forward.
The NSO group has denied doing anything wrong in the past, and the company says its tools are intended to help governments stop terrorists and other prominent criminals. However, in recent years, cybersecurity researchers have found that NSO products have been used against a wide range of targets, including protesters in countries with authoritarian governments.
Now that WhatsApp has taken legal action against the company, we can finally learn more about its operations. However, news that hacking has also been used to target government and military officials could also lead to a more formal investigation.
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Via Reuters