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Meta’s secure chat platform sent a cease and desist letter to the Israeli firm last week, claiming attacks on journalists and other civil society members.
A WhatsApp spokesperson has revealed the company has called on Israeli spyware firm Paragon Solutions to immediately cease all activity targeting its users.
The company told the Reuters news agency last week that it was aware of at least 90 users in more than two dozen countries, including several European nations.
WhatsApp sent Paragon a cease and desist letter and said in a statement that it “will continue to protect people’s ability to communicate privately”.
According to WhatsApp’s spokesperson, Paragon sent its alleged victims a malicious document that included a zero-click exploit – a malware variant that does not require any interaction from the targeted user.
The matter has been referred to law enforcement and other industry bodies, as well as internet rights group Citizen Lab.
Paragon describes its products as “ethically based tools, teams, and insights to disrupt intractable threats”.
Paragon is not the first Israeli spyware maker to target WhatsApp and its users. WhatsApp is currently in a long-term dispute with the NSO Group following allegations that the latter’s Pegasus Spyware had been deployed against 1,400 WhatsApp users in 2019.
While the NSO Group had defended its actions by claiming that it had little control over how its customers used its software, court documents released in November 2024 suggest otherwise.
According to Josh Shaner, a former employee of US-based NSO affiliate Westbridge, a customer “only needed to enter the target device’s number and ‘press Install, and Pegasus will install the agent on the device remotely without any engagement’.”
“The rest,” Shaner said, “is done automatically by the system”.
WhatsApp said in its filing: “In other words, the customer simply places an order for a target device’s data, and NSO controls every aspect of the data retrieval and delivery process through its design of Pegasus.”
AE Industrial Partners – the US-based equity firm that acquired Paragon last year – has not released a statement on WhatsApp’s claims. Until recently, Paragon did not even have a website and preferred to keep a lower profile than many of its competitors.
Wired reported in October 2024 that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had signed a US$2 million contract with Paragon.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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