Facebook Sought NSO Group's Help to Buy Software to Better Spy on Users
Newly filed court documents have revealed that Facebook sought the help of controversial Israeli surveillance vendor NSO Group to buy a tool that could help the social network better monitor a subset of its users.
It's worth noting that Facebook and NSO Group are in the midst of a legal wrangle over the latter's exploitation of a now-patched vulnerability in WhatsApp to help governments hack into hundreds of human rights activists and journalists' phones and install Pegasus spyware.
NSO Group's Pegasus comes with advanced capabilities to jailbreak or root the infected mobile device, and turn on the phone's microphone and camera, scan emails and messages, and collect all sorts of sensitive information.
Now, according to a document filed with the courts, Facebook asked NSO Group for help in October 2017 after it found Onavo Protect — the VPN app that acted as a backdoor to gather data about its users, including web traffic information to analyse what apps were installed — to be less effective on iOS devices than on Android phones.
"The Facebook representatives also stated that Facebook wanted to use purported capabilities of Pegasus to monitor users on Apple devices and were willing to pay for the ability to monitor Onavo Protect users. Facebook proposed to pay NSO a monthly fee for each Onavo Protect user."
While Facebook was forced to shut down Onavo Protect following a backlash for the user monitoring, the social network's offer was declined by NSO Group, claiming it sells the software only to governments for law enforcement purposes.
If anything, the development is quite an irony in that Facebook wanted to employ the very software against its users it would later denounce for being employed against its users. In other words, it all depends on who is doing the spying.
It's worth noting that Facebook and NSO Group are in the midst of a legal wrangle over the latter's exploitation of a now-patched vulnerability in WhatsApp to help governments hack into hundreds of human rights activists and journalists' phones and install Pegasus spyware.NSO Group's Pegasus comes with advanced capabilities to jailbreak or root the infected mobile device, and turn on the phone's microphone and camera, scan emails and messages, and collect all sorts of sensitive information.
Now, according to a document filed with the courts, Facebook asked NSO Group for help in October 2017 after it found Onavo Protect — the VPN app that acted as a backdoor to gather data about its users, including web traffic information to analyse what apps were installed — to be less effective on iOS devices than on Android phones.
"The Facebook representatives also stated that Facebook wanted to use purported capabilities of Pegasus to monitor users on Apple devices and were willing to pay for the ability to monitor Onavo Protect users. Facebook proposed to pay NSO a monthly fee for each Onavo Protect user."
While Facebook was forced to shut down Onavo Protect following a backlash for the user monitoring, the social network's offer was declined by NSO Group, claiming it sells the software only to governments for law enforcement purposes.
If anything, the development is quite an irony in that Facebook wanted to employ the very software against its users it would later denounce for being employed against its users. In other words, it all depends on who is doing the spying.
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