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Apple Sues Surveillance Firm NSO Group for Spying on Apple Users

It’s the second tech titan to pony up and try to take on NSO Group in court.

Apple sued Israeli software surveillance company NSO Group on Tuesday, alleging “egregious” efforts to spy on Apple users with its flagship spyware, Pegasus. NSO Group and its customers allegedly delivered the invasive malware—which is capable of monitoring victims’ cameras, microphones, texts, location, and more—without users’ knowledge from February to September of this year by using an exploit cybersecurity researchers label “FORCEDENTRY,” according to court filings. Although Apple has patched the vulnerability and just a handful of users were targeted, Apple is taking NSO to court because it wants to put a stop to brazen attacks like this and hold NSO Group, which was recently sanctioned by the Biden administration, accountable, said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “State-sponsored actors like the NSO Group spend millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability. That needs to change,” Federighi said in a statement.

Apple is not the first major tech titan to go after NSO Group—Facebook and WhatsApp sued NSO Group in 2019 over allegations NSO Group products targeted thousands of WhatsApp customers. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just this month gave that case a green light to proceed after it quashed NSO Group’s planned argument that it was immune from answering questions in court.

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Shannon VavraNational Security Reporter

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