WhatsApp 'hack' is serious rights violation, say alleged victims
Source: The Guardian
WhatsApp 'hack' is serious rights violation, say alleged victims
Activists speak out after being warned of alleged cyber-attack to infiltrate mobile phones
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Nick Hopkins and Oliver Holmes
Fri 1 Nov 2019 14.14 GMT
Last modified on Fri 1 Nov 2019 17.35 GMT
More than a dozen pro-democracy activists, journalists and academics have spoken out after WhatsApp privately warned them they had allegedly been the victims of cyber-attacks designed to secretly infiltrate their mobile phones.
The individuals received alerts saying they were among more than 100 human rights campaigners whose phones were believed to have been hacked using malware sold by NSO Group, an Israeli cyberweapons company.
WhatsApp launched an unprecedented lawsuit against the surveillance company earlier this week, claiming it had discovered more than 1,400 of its users were targeted by NSO technology in a two-week period in May.
Filed in a Californian court, the lawsuit described the alleged attacks as an unmistakeable pattern of abuse that violated US law.
Two pro-democracy campaigners from Morocco who received the WhatsApp warnings said any use of the sophisticated malware, known as Pegasus, against them would be a serious violation of their rights.
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Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/01/whatsapp-hack-is-serious-rights-violation-say-alleged-victims