WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - Israel's NSO Group was

handed a $168 million penalty by a federal jury in California on

Tuesday for hijacking the servers of WhatsApp in order to hack

users of the Meta-owned chat platform on behalf of

foreign spy agencies. The case caps a six-year battle between

the American social media giant and the surveillance firm. It

has also cast a unusual amount of light on the inner workings of

the spyware industry.

Here is what we have learned:

TOP-SHELF SPYWARE IS NOT CHEAP

Between 2018 and 2020 NSO charged its European government

customers a "standard price" of $7 million for use of its

platform to hack 15 different devices at a time, according to

Sarit Bizinsky Gil, NSO's vice president of global business

operations. The executive said the ability to hack a phone

outside the customer's country was a separate add-on worth

approximately $1 million or $2 million.

"It is a highly sophisticated product," Meta lawyer Antonio

Perez told the court in his opening statement, "And it carries a

hefty price tag."

NSO HACKED THOUSANDS OF DEVICES

Between 2018 and 2020 the Israeli spyware firm was

responsible for breaking into thousands of devices, according to

Tamir Gazneli, NSO's vice president of research and development.

During the trial, Gazneli said he disagreed with the idea that

his company sold "spyware," leading to an exchange with Perez in

which Gazneli insisted his firm's tools were used to gather

intelligence on targets but "not people."

"You don't consider the targets people, Mr. Gazneli?" Perez

asked him.

"That's not what I said," he responded. "What I said is that

the targets are intelligence targets of intelligence agencies."

AMERICAN TAXPAYERS SENT MILLIONS TO NSO'S COFFERS

The Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of

Investigation collectively paid NSO $7.6 million, according to

court records. The agencies' past dealings with the Israeli

spyware company had previously been disclosed by The New York

Times, which said the CIA bankrolled Djibouti's purchase of NSO

spyware and the bureau bought it for testing, but the trial put

a price tag on the relationship.

NSO TARGETED WHATSAPP'S INFRASTRUCTURE DURING THE LAWSUIT

The lawsuit against NSO did not deter the spyware firm from

continuing to abuse WhatsApp's infrastructure, Meta's lawyers

said in a court document filed late last month.

"NSO repeatedly targeted Plaintiffs, Plaintiffs' servers,

and Plaintiffs' mobile client even after this litigation was

filed," the filing said.

The filing seeks a permanent injunction against NSO, which

it said "poses a significant threat of ongoing and prospective

harm" to Meta, its platform, and its users.