Judge Ponders WhatsApp’s Request to Shutdown NSO’s Spyware

A decision is near on a permanent block of Israeli firm NSO Group Technologies Ltd. deploying spyware across Meta Platforms Inc.'s messaging service, a federal judge said Thursday, though a day-long hearing in Oakland was largely useless, she said.

A ruling in favor of Meta’s WhatsApp Inc. would solidify the company’s win in a nearly six-year-long case involving findings that NSO violated state and federal anti-hacking laws by targeting some 1,400 phones using Pegasus spyware that was secretly deployed through WhatsApp servers.

Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the US District Court for the Northern District of California also considered NSO’s motion ...