Nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged on Friday.
The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had “high confidence” that the 90 users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised”.
It is not clear who was behind the attack. Like other spyware makers, Paragon’s hacking software is used by government clients and WhatsApp said it had not been able to identify the clients who ordered the alleged attacks.
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 declined to disclose where the journalists and members of civil society were based, including whether they were based in the US.
Paragon has a US office in Chantilly, Virginia. The company has faced recent scrutiny after Wired magazine in October reported that it had entered into a $2m contract with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s homeland security investigations division.
[…]
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.
Paragon’s spyware is known as Graphite and has capabilities that are comparable to NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. Once a phone is infected with Graphite, the operator of the spyware has total access to the phone, including being able to read messages that are sent via encrypted applications like WhatsApp and Signal.
The company, which was founded by the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, has been the subject of media reports in Israel recently, after it was reported that the group was sold to a US private equity firm, AE Industrial Partners, for $900m.
[…]
Robin Edgar
Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft