On Monday, tech giants Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, and Google entered into a legal battle against hacking organization NSO. Facebook had already been battling the organization in court for a year and has now been backed by two industry leaders. The tech companies filed a brief in federal court alleging that the firm’s tools were powerful and dangerous. The new development in the case may lead to Facebook’s victory.
The suit was initially filed against NSO by Facebook last year after it found that NSO had leveraged a bug in Facebook’s instant messaging program WhatsApp and used it to conduct surveillance on over a thousand people worldwide. NSO is a cyber-surveillance company that sells digital break-in tools to police and spy agencies. Due to the nature of the organization, it alleges that it should receive sovereign immunity. This policy insulates foreign governments from lawsuits. NSO lost in the Northern District of California and has since appeared to the Ninth Circuit.
Read More: Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Dell join legal battle against hacking company NSO