Including Journalists, WhatsApp Says Users Targeted by Israeli Spyware Company Paragon

California (Quds News Network)- Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions reportedly targeted 90 journalists and other civil society members using Meta’s popular WhatsApp chat service.

An official at WhatsApp told Reuters on Friday that they had sent Paragon a cease-and-desist letter following the hack.

The official declined to say who, specifically, was targeted but confirmed that WhatsApp is referring targets to the Canadian internet watchdog group Citizen Lab.

He also declined to say how WhatsApp ascertained that Paragon was responsible for the breach. He said law enforcement and industry partners had been informed, but would not go into detail.

In a statement, WhatsApp said the company “will continue to protect people’s ability to communicate privately”.

WhatsApp also told the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper that it had “high confidence” the users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised”.

Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton told Reuters that the discovery of Paragon spyware targeting WhatsApp users “is a reminder that mercenary spyware continues to proliferate and as it does, so we continue to see familiar patterns of problematic use”.

Paragon sells high-end surveillance software to government clients. They typically advertise their services as critical to fighting crime and protecting national security.

Several reports in recent years have found that Israeli-made Pegasus spyware has been used by governments across the world to spy on activists, journalists, and even heads of state.

Paragon, which was co-founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, was reportedly sold to a US private equity firm, AE Industrial Partners, for $900m in 2024.

The company’s website advertises “ethically based tools, teams, and insights to disrupt intractable threats”.

Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at the advocacy group Access Now, said Paragon had the reputation of being a more responsible spyware company, “but WhatsApp’s recent revelations suggest otherwise”.

“This is not just a question of some bad apples — these types of abuses [are] a feature of the commercial spyware industry,” she told Reuters.

Experts said the targeting was a “zero-click” attack, which means targets would not have had to click on any malicious links to be infected.

WhatsApp said the attacks had been disrupted in December and that it was not clear how long the targets may have been under threat.

A person close to the company told the Guardian that Paragon had 35 government customers, that all of them could be considered democratic, and that Paragon did not do business with countries, including some democracies, that have previously been accused of abusing spyware. The person said that included Greece, Poland, Hungary, Mexico and India.

The group is expected to publish a report in the future that will provide more details about the targeting.

WhatsApp announced the news just weeks after a judge in California ruled in the company’s favor in a landmark case against Israeli NSO Group, the high-profile spyware maker that in 2021 was placed by the Biden administration on a commerce department blacklist. At the time, the Biden administration said it had placed NSO on the so-called entity list because the company had engaged in activities “that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States”.

NSO has lobbied members of Congress to be taken off the list.

WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO in 2019 after it said 1,400 users had been infected by the company’s spyware. In December, a judge, Phyllis Hamilton, ruled that NSO was liable for the attacks, and that NSO had violated state and federal US hacking laws and WhatsApp’s own terms of service.

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