Davis Polk’s trial victory and unanimous jury verdict in favor of Meta and WhatsApp, ordering NSO Group to pay $168 million in damages for its 2019 spyware attack targeting WhatsApp, were recognized in the Daily Journal’s weekly Verdicts & Settlements section, which honors recent notable verdicts and settlements. The Davis Polk team was led by partners Greg Andres, Antonio Perez-Marques and Micah Block.

The jury’s verdict marked another landmark in a case originally filed in October 2019, after Meta and WhatsApp engineers discovered a sophisticated exploit attacking WhatsApp’s servers in May 2019. Meta and WhatsApp identified NSO Group as the source of the attack, and determined that NSO‘s victims included journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents and others. 

The jury trial, which was to decide the amount of damages that NSO Group owed Meta and WhatsApp, began on April 28, 2025 in Oakland, California. The six-day trial included groundbreaking testimony from NSO Group executives, who admitted that they used WhatsApp to install spyware on the mobile devices of up to tens of thousands of individuals, and continued to use WhatsApp to install spyware even after WhatsApp and Meta filed their complaint. The jury returned a unanimous verdict in favor of Meta and WhatsApp, ordering NSO Group to pay $167,254,000 in punitive damages and the full requested amount of $444,719 in compensatory damages. In awarding punitive damages, the jury found that NSO Group acted with malice, oppression or fraud in violating the CDAFA.

The case marks the first jury verdict against a commercial spyware company in U.S. court, and is the first U.S. verdict against NSO Group, which was added to the Department of Commerce Entity List for activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States in November 2021. The case is also the largest ever reported verdict in a civil case brought under either the CFAA or the CDAFA. 

The Davis Polk team also included counsel Gina Cora, Craig T. Cagney and Andrew Yaphe, associates Esther C. Townes, Luca Marzorati, Muhammad Sardar, Gersham Johnson, Quentin J. Ullrich, Amelia Birnie, Kaitlin Campanini, Meenu Mathews and Cyerra Haywood, law clerks Tyler Conroy and Thomas Floyd and senior paralegal Felicia Yu.

”Verdicts and Settlements: Whatsapp Inc., Facebook Inc. v. NSO Group Technologies Limited, Q Cyber Technologies Limited,” Daily Journal (June 20, 2025) (subscription required)

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