The Meta platform won a $168 million verdict against Israeli surveillance company NSO, a six-year ARM wrestling match between the largest social networking platform in the United States and the world's most famous spyware company, the company said Tuesday.

Meta has won a December ruling to find that NSO illegally exploited a bug in its messaging service WhatsApp to use spyware on its user's phone. Meta said a California jury found the NSO owed $444,719 in damages and $167.3 million in punitive damages Tuesday.

"The judgment in WhatsApp's case today is an important step in privacy and security, and it is the first victory over the development and use of illegal spyware that threatens the security and privacy of all," Mehta said in a statement.

In a statement, the NSO said it would “scrutinize the details of the judgment and take appropriate legal remedies, including further litigation and appeals.”

NSO, an Israeli company that first attracted global attention in 2016, has become “poster children in the surveillance industry and their abused and impunitive children,” said Natalia Krapiva, senior attorney for the human rights group. The NSO has long believed that its software is used to track terrorists and pedophiles, but the company is linked to abuse surveillance in countries around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Spain, Mexico, Poland and El Salvador.

WhatsApp’s lawsuit was filed in 2019, with one lawsuit filed against the Supreme Court – both NSO competitors and human rights advocates in the field of surveillance technology.

State-backed hackers victims have been working to keep spyware vendors responsible for their tools, and hackers have long been concerned that their products may impose legal sanctions. Krapiva said WhatsApp verdicts show that both outcomes are possible.

"This will hopefully show spyware companies that if you are careless, if you are rude, and the actions you take in NSO in these situations, will have consequences," she said.

In addition to sending messages to spyware merchants, the case also brought the curtains back to the internal way of NSO itself.

The court heard about the NSO’s 140 artificial research team, whose $50 million budget is used to exploit security vulnerabilities in smartphones. A lawyer for the company revealed that its clients include Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Mexico, a rare recording name on the NSO's tightly protected client list.

Much of the content about the spyware company’s goals and customers remains unknown, partly because the company refuses to hand over the evidence. In the December ruling, District Judge Phyllis Hamilton accused the NSO of “repeatedly failing to make relevant discoveries and failing to comply with court orders regarding such discoveries.” The Guardian reported last year that Israeli officials seized documents from the NSO to prevent them from going to U.S. courts.

“The whole case was shrouded in so many secrets,” Hamilton said during the trial. “There are so many things that I don’t know.”