WhatsApp has asked a United States (US) court to hold spyware maker NSO Group in contempt for violating a permanent injunction that barred the firm from ever targeting WhatsApp and its users, parent company Meta said on June 8, 2026. Meta alleges it caught fresh attacks linked to NSO, the Israeli firm behind the Pegasus spyware that the US government blacklisted in 2021.

This is the first alleged breach of the injunction WhatsApp won in October 2025, after a court found NSO liable for hacking under federal and state law.

Why this matters: NSO continues to operate while the question of who deployed Pegasus against Indian citizens remains unanswered. Pegasus targeted 1,223 users across 51 countries, with India being the second-most targeted country after Mexico, with 100 victims, including:

• Congress politician Rahul Gandhi.
• Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw.
• Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire.

India’s accountability process has stalled, even as US litigation has advanced. In 2021, the Supreme Court appointed a technical committee to determine whether the government used Pegasus against citizens, who purchased it, and whether such use was permitted under the law. The committee examined 29 phones and found malware on five of them but could not confirm the presence of Pegasus. The then Chief Justice of India noted that the government did not cooperate with the probe.

In April 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that it would not make the committee’s report public. Justice Surya Kant remarked that there is nothing wrong with a country possessing spyware; the question is against whom a government uses it. He also said that the report could not become “a document for discussion on the streets”. As a result, while a US court has identified NSO as a lawbreaker, India has neither confirmed nor denied purchasing the same tool allegedly used against its own citizens.

What Meta says it caught: Acting on user reports, Meta says it disrupted NSO-linked social engineering attempts that:

• Tried to trick people into clicking malicious links leading to external websites outside WhatsApp, mirroring earlier one-click phishing campaigns tied to NSO.
• Relied on test accounts and groups created by NSO on WhatsApp, which Meta subsequently took down.

Meta is sharing threat indicators so that anyone can check whether NSO-linked attempts targeted them across any platform, including text messages, email, or WhatsApp.

What Meta is asking the court: Meta wants the court to hold NSO in contempt of the permanent injunction. The timing is significant because it cuts against NSO’s own legal strategy. NSO appealed the liability finding, the injunction, and the damages award to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in November 2025, and asked the trial judge to pause the injunction while the appeal is pending. Meta’s contempt filing seeks to show that NSO should receive no such relief for three reasons:

• NSO conceded in a court filing that the injunction threatens its core product, since Pegasus accounted for 100% of its 2025 sales, according to Ars Technica.
• NSO continues to attack WhatsApp users even while contesting the order, which Meta presents as evidence that the firm will not stop on its own.
• NSO remains on the US government’s Entity List, a trade blacklist for firms acting against US interests, and continues to defy US courts.

The district court denied NSO’s motion to pause the injunction before the company appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

What Pegasus can do: The spyware’s capabilities explain why the injunction fight carries such high stakes. According to a brief filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute, Pegasus can access a target’s:

• Global Positioning System (GPS) location, contacts, calls, and text messages.
• Notes, browsing history, files, and passwords.
• Data normally protected by encryption, since the spyware operates directly on the device itself.

NSO’s chief executive officer (CEO) confirmed in court that the firm looks for ways to infiltrate phones beyond WhatsApp, targeting browsers, operating systems, and other applications. Meta says surveillance-for-hire firms treat no technology as off-limits, and their reported targets range from journalists to government officials, military personnel, and humanitarian organisations.

The case so far:

• 2019: WhatsApp sued NSO, alleging it exploited an audio-calling flaw to install Pegasus on roughly 1,400 devices.
• December 2024: The court found NSO liable for violating WhatsApp’s terms of service and the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
• May 2025: A jury awarded WhatsApp $167 million in punitive and $444,719 in compensatory damages.
• October 2025: Judge Phyllis Hamilton reduced the punitive damages to roughly $4 million, citing a cap on the damages ratio, but granted the permanent injunction NSO now contests.

How the coalition is fighting NSO: Meta argues no company can fight spyware alone, and points to a widening support base:

• Around a dozen civil society organisations, led by digital rights group Access Now and including the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, filed an amicus brief in May 2026 urging the Ninth Circuit to keep the injunction in place.
• Meta has contributed to the Spyware Accountability Initiative (SAI), which funds forensic research, user support, and advocacy across dozens of organisations.
• The Citizen Lab, a research group, helped notify targets of NSO’s 2019 attack, and one of its discoveries prompted an Apple security update across more than a billion devices.
• A Greek court this year issued the first criminal conviction of spyware company executives, built on forensic evidence and investigative reporting.

Also read:

• Pegasus Case: NSO Hit With $167M Penalty for Hacking WhatsApp Users Like Indian Politicians
• India Second-Most Targeted in Pegasus Spyware List, New Meta Court Docs Reveal
• Pegasus Spyware: All the latest facts on who was targeted, the modus operandi, and more