WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart told The Guardian the Pegasus spyware made by NSO Group used the messaging service to target “senior government officials” who were “allies of the U.S.” and other people who had “no business being under surveillance in any way, shape, or form.”
Citizen Lab first revealed information about Pegasus in September 2018. Last week Forbidden Stories, Amnesty International, and 16 news organizations formed The Pegasus Project to reveal that the spyware had secretly made its way onto tens of thousands of phones in the years since.
That project raised awareness of reports indicating that NSO Group exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp voice calling that allowed Pegasus to infect target smartphones—even if the call wasn’t answered—in 2019. WhatsApp said that 1,400 of its users were attacked in this way.
The company sued NSO Group over its exploitation of that vulnerability. Now Cathcart is pushing for other companies whose products were targeted by Pegasus, especially Apple, to follow the likes of Microsoft in speaking out against the mass surveillance enabled by this spyware.
“I hope that Apple will start taking that approach too,” Cathcart told The Guardian. “Be loud, join in. It’s not enough to say, most of our users don’t need to worry about this. It’s not enough to say ‘oh this is only thousands or tens of thousands of victims’. If this is affecting journalists all around the world, this is affecting human rights defenders all around the world, that affects us all. And if anyone’s phone is not secured that means everyone’s phone is not secure.”
Backing from one of the world’s largest tech companies might help WhatsApp in its ongoing case against NSO Group. In the meantime, The Pegasus Project has renewed public scrutiny of the use of spyware like Pegasus and raised questions about how secure mobile devices truly are.
