Israeli spyware firm fails to get hacking case dismissed
An Israeli judge has rejected an attempt by the spyware firm NSO Group to dismiss a case brought against it by a prominent Saudi activist who alleged that the company’s cyberweapons were used to hack his phone.
The decision could add pressure on the company, which faces multiple accusations that it sold surveillance technology, named Pegasus, to authoritarian regimes and other governments that have allegedly used it to target political activists and journalists.
A Tel Aviv court ruled that the case brought by Omar Abdulaziz, a dissident based in Canada, could go ahead. In his lawsuit, he has argued that Saudi spies used Pegasus to read his conversations with Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist later murdered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. The Guardian understands that Abdulaziz and Khashoggi exchanged hundreds of messages in the months before he died.
