Messaging giant WhatsApp won a landmark ruling Friday against the best-known maker of spyware when a federal judge in California ruled that NSO Group had hacked into the Meta unit’s systems by sending malicious software through its servers to more than a thousand targeted phones.

NSO Group, the organization behind the Pegasus spyware, has been found liable in a lawsuit brought by Meta’s WhatsApp over attacks on about 1,400 devices, as reported by The Record. NSO Group is liable for charges of violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,

A U.S. judge ruled on Friday in favor of Meta Platforms' WhatsApp in a lawsuit accusing Israel's NSO Group of exploiting a bug in the messaging app to install spy software allowing unauthorized surveillance.

Messaging service WhatsApp claimed a major legal victory over Israeli spyware firm NSO Group on Friday after a federal judge ruled that NSO was liable under federal and California law for a 2019 hacking spree that breached over 1,000 WhatsApp users.

A U.S. judge has ruled against the Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO for breaching WhatsApp servers and installing spyware on 1,400 devices.

WhatsApp had filed a lawsuit against NSO, accusing it of infecting and surveilling the phones of nearly 1,400 people through the Pegasus spyware

In a major legal victory, messaging app WhatsApp won a five-year-old case against NSO Group, the creator of the infamous Pegasus spyware. A U.S. judge ruled that the Israeli-based NSO had violated key American laws by hacking into WhatsApp systems and targeting over a thousand phones.

The federal judge in California also granted summary judgment to WhatsApp on its claims NSO engaged in computer fraud through spyware embedded in the app's messages.