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WhatsApp said on Friday that it had interrupt a hacking campaign that targeted around 90 users , including journalists and members of polite society .
A WhatsApp spokesperson tell TechCrunch that the campaign was link to Paragon , an Israeli spyware Lord thatwas acquired in December of last yearby American private equity giant AE Industrial Partners .
“ We ’ve reached out directly to people who we believe were affected . This is the late model of why spyware companies must be held accountable for their unlawful actions . WhatsApp will continue to protect citizenry ’s ability to communicate in private , ” WhatsApp spokesperson Zade Alsawah order TechCrunch .
WhatsApp tell that the cut up campaign used malicious PDFs air via WhatsApp grouping to compromise targets and said it had push a fix to prevent this mechanism . The hack did not expect any activeness by the prey , according to the ship’s company .
John Scott - Railton , a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab who has for class investigated spyware companies and their abuse , narrate TechCrunch that they also have observed this hack campaign by Paragon using this specific attack vector and that they are investigating it .
WhatsApp tell TechCrunch that it think the hacking campaign happened in December , and that it charge a cease and abstain letter to Paragon .
Idan Nurick , the CEO of Paragon , did not reply to a request for comment sent via LinkedIn . AE Industrial did not react to a request for comment .
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This is the first prison term that Paragon has been publicly linked to a hack campaign that allegedly direct journalist and member of civil company . Ever since its innovation in 2019 , Paragon has been able to keep a low profile and head off getting ensnared in scandal like other spyware makers such as Intellexa and NSO Group , which have both been the aim of the U.S. politics , with Intellexa and its foundersbeing sanctionedand NSO Groupbeing put on a blocklist .
Paragon , through its U.S. subordinate , sign a contractwith the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in September , as Wired revealed last year . The New Yorkercited a Paragon sourceas saying the declaration come after a vetting operation whereby the company demonstrated its engineering had controls to prevent client abroad from target U.S. residents .
At this point , it ’s indecipherable who are target of this spyware campaign revealed by WhatsApp . The company said that the targets were in over two dozen rural area , including several in Europe .
Natalia Krapiva , the senior tech - legal counsellor at Access Now , a digital right organization that enquire spyware abuses , celebrate the natural action take up by WhatsApp .
“ For some time Paragon has had the reputation of a ‘ better ’ spyware society not implicated in obvious vilification , but WhatsApp ’s late revelation suggest otherwise , ” Krapiva told TechCrunch . “ This is not just a interrogative sentence of some bad apple — these types of vilification are a feature of the commercial spyware diligence . ”
On its official website , Paragon says it “ provide our customers with ethically base tools , teams , and penetration to disrupt intractable threats . ”
This story has been update with more particular from WhatsApp .
