Officials at the Meta platform’s popular WhatsApp chat service said Israeli spy company Paragon Solutions targets many users, including journalists and civil society members.
WhatsApp sent a stop letter to Paragon after hacking, the official said Friday. WhatsApp said in a statement that the company “will continue to protect people’s ability to communicate in private.”
Paragon declined to comment.
WhatsApp officials told Reuters it has worked hard to crack about 90 users.
Officials declined to say who was targeting the target. But he said the targeted people are located in more than twenty countries, including several in Europe. He said the malicious electronic documents received by WhatsApp users do not require user interaction to harm their targets, a zero-click hack that is considered particularly invisible.
The official said WhatsApp has since broken hacker-style work and referred the target to the Canadian Internet Surveillance Dog Group Citizen Lab. The official declined to discuss how to determine Paragon is responsible for the hacking. Law enforcement and industry partners have been informed but declined to provide details, he said.
The FBI did not immediately return the news seeking comments.
Citizen Lab Researcher John Scott-Railton said the discovery of Paragon spyware targeting WhatsApp users reminds you that mercenary spyware continues to breed, so we continue to see familiar problematic use mode. ”
Spyware merchants such as Paragon sell high-end surveillance software to government customers, which is often crucial to crime and protecting national security.
But this spy tool has been repeatedly found on phone calls by journalists, activists, opposition politicians and at least 50 U.S. officials, raising concerns about the spread of unrestricted technology.
Paragon was reportedly acquired by Florida-based investment group AE Industrial Partners last month – trying to publicly position itself as one of the more responsible players in the industry.
Its website promotes “ethical-based tools, teams and insights to undermine tricky threats” and quotes people familiar with the company that Paragon is only sold to governments in stable democracies.
Natalia Krapiva, senior technical legal counsel for advocacy group Access, said Paragon’s reputation is to become a better spyware company, but WhatsApp’s recent revelation also suggests. ”
“It’s not just some bad Apple’s problem – these types of abuse (characteristics of the commercial spyware industry).
AE did not immediately return messages seeking comments.
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