security

Zuckercorp says surveillance-for-hire vendor was still running phishing operations after federal court told it to knock it off

Meta has asked a federal judge to hold Israeli spyware maker NSO Group in contempt of court after claiming it caught the surveillance vendor targeting WhatsApp users again despite a permanent injunction ordering it to stop. In a blog post on Monday, Meta said it had disrupted "NSO-linked social engineering attempts" after investigating reports from users. According to the company, the activity involved attempts to lure targets into clicking malicious links that redirected them to websites outside WhatsApp, as well as the creation of test accounts and groups on the messaging platform."We successfully disrupted NSO-linked social engineering attempts after investigating user reports," Meta said. "They tried to trick people into clicking on malicious links to drive them to external websites outside of WhatsApp, similar to previously reported 1-click phishing campaigns linked to NSO."

WhatsApp also published a handful of domains it linked to the campaign, including ikhwancast[.]com, ghazacast[.]com, and fr24cast[.]com, and said it was releasing indicators to help organizations identify related activity.