Israeli spyware company Paragon targeted nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using Meta’s WhatsApp on Friday Jan 31, an Israeli maker of hacking software told the Guardian. The journalists and other members were being alerted for a possible breach of their devices.
WhatsApp said that they had “high confidence” that the users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised.” However, the social media giant refused to reveal where these journalists and members of the civil society were based. An official said that WhatsApp had sent Paragon a cease-and-desist letter after the hacking.
WhatsApp further said that the alleged attacks were stopped in December and that it was not clear how long the targets may have been under threat. “WhatsApp has disrupted a spyware campaign by Paragon that targeted a number of users including journalists and members of civil society. We’ve reached out directly to people who we believe were affected.
This is the latest example of why spyware companies must be held accountable for their unlawful actions,” a company spokesperson said. “They will continue to protect people’s ability to communicate privately,” the statement read.
Notably, Paragon’s US office is located in Chantilly, Virginia.
The spyware company has faced recent scrutiny after American magazine WIRED reported in October that it had entered into a USD 2 million contract with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s homeland security investigations division.
Later, the division issued a stop-work order for the contract to verify whether it complied with a Biden administration executive order that restricted the spyware usage by the federal government.
The spyware is also known as Graphite. Once a phone gets hacked by Graphite, the operator of the spyware can access the phone completely, including reading the messages that are sent via encrypted applications like WhatsApp and Signal.
The social media further said that it believed that the so-called vector was through a malicious PDF file that was sent to the individuals after adding them to a group chat.
It added that they can say with “confidence” that Paragon was linked to this targeting.
Erizia Rubyjeana
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