NSO Group Board Member Departs in Wake of WhatsApp Lawsuit

(Bloomberg) -- The fight is ratcheting up between Facebook and Israeli spyware maker NSO Group, which is accused of using malware to hack into the phones of diplomats, journalists and others.

A NSO board member with ties to Facebook has departed, and an NSO employee is accusing Facebook of disabling his social media account and those of others tied to the company.

Both actions follow a lawsuit filed by Facebook and its subsidiary, WhatsApp, accusing NSO Group of infecting the phones of some users with spyware delivered through the messaging app.

The board member who left, Zamir Dahbash, is chief executive officer of Shalom Tel Aviv, a public relations firm that counts Facebook Inc. as one of its clients, according to two people familiar with the matter. Dahbash has previously been quoted as an NSO spokesman in press articles dating back as far as August 2016.

NSO Group and Facebook didn’t respond to a request for comment. Shalom Tel Aviv didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

Though it continues to represent for both Facebook and NSO, Shalom Tel Aviv has excluded itself from doing public relations work related to the lawsuit, according to a person familiar with the matter.

According to an archived page of the NSO website, Dahbash was listed as a board member on the day before the lawsuit was filed. His name and picture were removed from the website after the suit was filed.

Meanwhile, an NSO employee accused Facebook of disabling his Facebook and Instagram accounts following the lawsuit. In a post on LinkedIn, Guy Brenner called Facebook the “greatest privacy violator in the history of mankind.”

“Are you serious, Facebook?,” wrote Brenner, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as a global intelligence services and training manager. “Are you personally ‘punishing’ past and current company employees? You’re acting like a #cyberbully, not a justice seeker.” In a brief interview, Brenner said the accounts of family and friends of NSO employees were disabled too.

Eugene Sherman, formerly NSO Group’s chief information officer and head of global IT, told Bloomberg News that his Facebook and Instagram account had also been disabled, even though he no longer works at the company. Dahbash’s Instagram and Facebook accounts remain active.

NSO Group’s software can surreptitiously hack a mobile phone for the purposes of surveillance. Its most famous product, Pegasus, can gain entire access to a mobile phone’s contents, and can even secretly use the phone’s camera and microphone. The company has said it sells its software and services to government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to help thwart terrorist attacks and crimes.

But human rights activists have repeatedly criticized NSO Group, alleging the company has sold its services to oppressive regimes that use the technology to spy on dissidents. NSO Group has said that it does not make decisions about who is targeted by its spyware.

In its lawsuit, WhatsApp accused the NSO Group of violating its terms of service by creating fake WhatsApp accounts for the purpose of distributing malware to 1,400 devices, including those of “attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and other senior foreign government officials.”

The lawsuit said that NSO Group used a vulnerability in WhatsApp, since patched, to secretly deliver its surveillance software to users. NSO denied the claims in the lawsuit and said it would “vigorously fight them.”

WhatsApp has notified the alleged targets of NSO hacking tools via its app. Those notified include Moroccan and Rwandan activists, according to reports in the Guardian and the Financial Times.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Turton in New York at wturton1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Martin at amartin146@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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