WhatsApp files complaint against NSO over alleged cyber attack using service

The WhatsApp messaging app says it thwarted “a highly sophisticated cyber attack” by Israel-based NSO Group which exploited its video calling feature in May.

The Facebook-owned company says it has filed a complaint in a US court against NSO Group over the incident, and is seeking to have it banned from using the popular application.

In a Washington Post op-ed, WhatsApp head Will Cathcart says the NSO attack “targeted at least 100 human-rights defenders, journalists and other members of civil society across the world.”

“At WhatsApp, we believe people have a fundamental right to privacy and that no one else should have access to your private conversations, not even us. Mobile phones provide us with great utility, but turned against us they can reveal our locations and our private messages, and record sensitive conversations we have with others,” he writes.