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US Judge Finds Israel's NSO Group Liable for Hacking in WhatsApp Lawsuit

Israeli cyber firm NSO Group's exhibition stand is seen at "ISDEF 2019", an international defense and homeland security expo, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Keren Manor/File Photo
Israeli cyber firm NSO Group's exhibition stand is seen at "ISDEF 2019", an international defense and homeland security expo, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Keren Manor/File Photo
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US Judge Finds Israel's NSO Group Liable for Hacking in WhatsApp Lawsuit

Israeli cyber firm NSO Group's exhibition stand is seen at "ISDEF 2019", an international defense and homeland security expo, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Keren Manor/File Photo
Israeli cyber firm NSO Group's exhibition stand is seen at "ISDEF 2019", an international defense and homeland security expo, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Keren Manor/File Photo

A US judge ruled on Friday in favor of Meta Platforms' WhatsApp in a lawsuit accusing Israel's NSO Group of exploiting a bug in the messaging app to install spy software allowing unauthorized surveillance.

US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, granted a motion by WhatsApp and found NSO liable for hacking and breach of contract.

The case will now proceed to a trial only on the issue of damages, Hamilton said. NSO Group did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, according to Reuters.

Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, said the ruling is a win for privacy.

"We spent five years presenting our case because we firmly believe that spyware companies could not hide behind immunity or avoid accountability for their unlawful actions," Cathcart said in a social media post.

"Surveillance companies should be on notice that illegal spying will not be tolerated."

Cybersecurity experts welcomed the judgment.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher with Canadian internet watchdog Citizen Lab — which first brought to light NSO’s Pegasus spyware in 2016 — called the judgment a landmark ruling with “huge implications for the spyware industry.”

“The entire industry has hidden behind the claim that whatever their customers do with their hacking tools, it's not their responsibility,” he said in an instant message. “Today's ruling makes it clear that NSO Group is in fact responsible for breaking numerous laws.”

WhatsApp in 2019 sued NSO seeking an injunction and damages, accusing it of accessing WhatsApp servers without permission six months earlier to install the Pegasus software on victims' mobile devices. The lawsuit alleged the intrusion allowed the surveillance of 1,400 people, including journalists, human rights activists and dissidents.

NSO had argued that Pegasus helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies fight crime and protect national security and that its technology is intended to help catch terrorists, pedophiles and hardened criminals.

NSO appealed a trial judge's 2020 refusal to award it "conduct-based immunity," a common law doctrine protecting foreign officials acting in their official capacity.

Upholding that ruling in 2021, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals called it an "easy case" because NSO's mere licensing of Pegasus and offering technical support did not shield it from liability under a federal law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which took precedence over common law.

The US Supreme Court last year turned away NSO's appeal of the lower court's decision, allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

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Technology

Google Unveils $6.4 Bn Investment in Germany

The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. (Reuters)
The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. (Reuters)
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Google Unveils $6.4 Bn Investment in Germany

The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. (Reuters)
The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. (Reuters)

Google unveiled Tuesday its biggest-ever investment in Germany, pledging 5.5 billion euros ($6.4 billion) for a new data center and other projects, as Europe seeks to catch up in the AI race.

"We are driving growth in Germany," Chancellor Friedrich Merz said as the investments, to be made by 2029, were announced.

"Our country is and will remain one of the most attractive places for investment in the world," he said.

Google's plans include a new data center and expansion of an existing center in the western state of Hesse, providing computing power for artificial intelligence.

It also plans to expand its offices in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich, and outlined various projects aimed at reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.

These included buying renewable wind and solar energy and a "heat recovery project" that would see excess heat produced by a data center re-used by local residents.

The plans will support around 9,000 jobs a year in Germany, Google said.

The investments are a boost for Germany, whose economy is struggling, as well as for Europe it seeks to catch up with AI leaders the United States and China.

Technology

AI Agents Open Door to New Hacking Threats

AI Agents Open Door to New Hacking Threats
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AI Agents Open Door to New Hacking Threats

AI Agents Open Door to New Hacking Threats

Cybersecurity experts are warning that artificial intelligence agents, widely considered the next frontier in the generative AI revolution, could wind up getting hijacked and doing the dirty work for hackers.

AI agents are programs that use artificial intelligence chatbots to do the work humans do online, like buy a plane ticket or add events to a calendar.

But the ability to order around AI agents with plain language makes it possible for even the technically non-proficient to do mischief, AFP said.

"We're entering an era where cybersecurity is no longer about protecting users from bad actors with a highly technical skillset," AI startup Perplexity said in a blog post.

"For the first time in decades, we're seeing new and novel attack vectors that can come from anywhere."

These so-called injection attacks are not new in the hacker world, but previously required cleverly written and concealed computer code to cause damage.

But as AI tools evolved from just generating text, images or video to being "agents" that can independently scour the internet, the potential for them to be commandeered by prompts slipped in by hackers has grown.

"People need to understand there are specific dangers using AI in the security sense," said software engineer Marti Jorda Roca at NeuralTrust, which specializes in large language model security.

Meta calls this query injection threat a "vulnerability." OpenAI chief information security officer Dane Stuckey has referred to it as "an unresolved security issue."

Both companies are pouring billions of dollars into AI, the use of which is ramping up rapidly along with its capabilities.

AI 'off track'

Query injection can in some cases take place in real time when a user prompt -- "book me a hotel reservation" -- is gerrymandered by a hostile actor into something else -- "wire $100 to this account."

But these nefarious prompts can also be hiding out on the internet as AI agents built into browsers encounter online data of dubious quality or origin, and potentially booby-trapped with hidden commands from hackers.

Eli Smadja of Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point sees query injection as the "number one security problem" for large language models that power AI agents and assistants that are fast emerging from the ChatGPT revolution.

Major rivals in the AI industry have installed defenses and published recommendations to thwart such cyberattacks.

Microsoft has integrated a tool to detect malicious commands based on factors including where instructions for AI agents originate.

OpenAI alerts users when agents doing their bidding visit sensitive websites and blocks proceeding until the software is supervised in real time by the human user.

Some security professionals suggest requiring AI agents to get user approval before performing any important task - like exporting data or accessing bank accounts.

"One huge mistake that I see happening a lot is to give the same AI agent all the power to do everything," Smadja told AFP.

In the eyes of cybersecurity researcher Johann Rehberger, known in the industry as "wunderwuzzi," the biggest challenge is that attacks are rapidly improving.

"They only get better," Rehberger said of hacker tactics.

Part of the challenge, according to the researcher, is striking a balance between security and ease of use since people want the convenience of AI doing things for them without constant checks and monitoring.

Rehberger argues that AI agents are not mature enough to be trusted yet with important missions or data.

"I don't think we are in a position where you can have an agentic AI go off for a long time and safely do a certain task," the researcher said.

"It just goes off track."

Technology

Nvidia and Big Tech Rally to Help Wall Street Recover Much of Last Week's Loss

A view of a Nvidia logo at their headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan May 31, 2023. (Reuters)
A view of a Nvidia logo at their headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan May 31, 2023. (Reuters)
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Nvidia and Big Tech Rally to Help Wall Street Recover Much of Last Week's Loss

A view of a Nvidia logo at their headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan May 31, 2023. (Reuters)
A view of a Nvidia logo at their headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan May 31, 2023. (Reuters)

Big Tech and other superstars of the US stock market are rallying on Monday, as Wall Street recovers much of its loss from last week.

The S&P 500 climbed 1.2% to claw back more than two-thirds of its first weekly loss in the last four. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 183 points, or 0.4%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.9% higher.

Nvidia was by far the strongest force pushing the market upward and rose 4%. It and other winners in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology had been at the center of last week’s drop. Critics say their stock prices shot too high and too fast in the mania around AI, drawing comparisons to the 2000 dot-com bubble that ultimately burst.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips for Nvidia and other companies, saw its stock that trades in United States rise 3.1% after saying its revenue climbed nearly 17% in October from a year earlier. While such growth is strong compared with other companies, it’s a slowdown from TSMC’s earlier performance.

Another AI darling, Palantir Technologies, jumped 8% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500.

The gains for tech helped offset losses across much of the rest of the market, as the majority of stocks within the S&P 500 index sank.

Health insurers fell as uncertainty remains about whether Washington will extend expiring health care tax credits, a sticking point in the disagreement on Capitol Hill that's created the longest-ever shutdown for the US government.

That's even though the Senate took the first steps on Sunday to end the shutdown.

President Donald Trump suggested in a social media post over the weekend — with few details — that the subsidies being sent to the “money sucking” insurance companies should instead be sent directly to people so they can buy their own health insurance.

Humana fell 2.6%, and Cigna slipped 0.7%, The AP news reported.

The effects of the government's shutdown have become more apparent following the cancellations of thousands of flights over the weekend. Towers are facing shortages as some air traffic controllers — unpaid for weeks — have stopped showing up for work.

Besides the pain at airports, the US government’s shutdown has also delayed many important reports on the economy. A resumption could upset financial markets if the released logjam shows data that dashes traders’ expectations for coming cuts to interest rates.

The wide expectation is that the Federal Reserve will continue to cut its main interest rate in hopes of shoring up what has been a slowing job market. Wall Street loves lower interest rates because they can give the economy a boost while also pushing prices for investments upwards.

But the Fed has said it may have to halt its cuts if inflation worsens because lower interest rates can give inflation more fuel.

Without updates from the US government on jobs and the economy, traders have been trawling profit reports from companies for clues about how things are going.

Tyson Foods, which sells chicken and other meat, climbed 2.1% after reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It benefited from increases in prices of 11% to 17% for its beef and pork.

Roughly four out of every five companies in the S&P 500 have also been reporting stronger profits for the summer than analysts expected. Companies usually top analysts’ profit expectations each quarter, but the pressure was high this time around because they needed to justify the big moves upward their stock prices have made since April.

Delivering bigger profits is one of the easier ways they can quiet criticism that their stock prices have become too expensive.

Companies have also been giving generally strong forecasts for upcoming results, according to Bank of America strategist Savita Subramanian. That has analysts' overall expectations for earnings in 2026 nearly all the way back to where they were before Trump shocked the economy and financial markets with his “Liberation Day” announcement of worldwide tariffs.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied across much of Europe and Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 3% for one of the bigger gains. Chip company SK Hynix, which is cooperating with Nvidia on artificial intelligence, leaped 4.5%. Its bigger rival, Samsung Electronics, climbed 2.8%.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.10% from 4.11% late Friday.