{"id":3118,"date":"2025-02-03T21:18:25","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T21:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/journalist-targeted-by-paragon-spyware-on-whatsapp\/"},"modified":"2025-02-03T21:18:25","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T21:18:25","slug":"journalist-targeted-by-paragon-spyware-on-whatsapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/journalist-targeted-by-paragon-spyware-on-whatsapp\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist targeted by Paragon spyware on WhatsApp"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Friday, at 2:48 p.m., Francesco Cancellato received a concerning notification on his cell phone while he was at home near Milan. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is a message from WhatsApp,\u201d read the message in Italian, which was obtained by TechCrunch. \u201cIn December, WhatsApp interrupted the activities of a spyware company which we believe attacked your device. Our investigations indicate that you may have received a harmful file via WhatsApp and that the spyware may have resulted in accessing your data, including messages saved on the device.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have made changes to prevent this specific attack from happening again. However, your device\u2019s operating system may remain compromised due to the spyware,\u201d continued the message. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cancellato is the first target to come forward following the disclosure of a hacking campaign carried out using spyware allegedly made by Paragon Solutions, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/01\/31\/whatsapp-says-it-disrupted-a-hacking-campaign-targeting-journalists-with-spyware\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">as WhatsApp claimed on Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time, WhatsApp said that the spying campaign targeted around 90 people, including journalists like Cancellato and members of civil society all over the world. According to The New Yorker, the company\u2019s deal with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement months earlier in September was the result of a vetting process where the company allegedly showed it could prevent its technology from being used by other countries against Americans, but not the U.S. government<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paragon Solutions <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/12\/16\/israeli-spyware-maker-paragon-bought-by-u-s-private-equity-giant\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">was acquired in December 2024<\/a> by American private equity giant AE Industrial Partners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paragon Solutions and AE Industrial did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WhatsApp\u2019s message to Cancellato suggested he could contact Citizen Lab, a digital rights group at the University of Toronto that has for a decade investigated and exposed spyware abuses all over the world, including Ethiopia, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Spain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cancellato, who said he and Fanpage have contacted the authorities, told TechCrunch that he \u201cdid what the message asked me to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt is actually quite strange for a journalist to be spied on in a Western democracy,\u201d said Cancellato, adding that the phone that was targeted was his company device, so \u201cit\u2019s an attack on Fanpage; it\u2019s not an attack on me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/02\/03\/journalist-targeted-on-whatsapp-by-paragon-spyware-i-feel-violated\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Source Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, at 2:48 p.m., Francesco Cancellato received a concerning notification on his cell phone while he was at home near Milan. \u201cThis is a message from WhatsApp,\u201d read the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[665,234,369,368,666,151,667,668,367,370],"class_list":["post-3118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-ae-industrial","tag-hackers","tag-hacking","tag-israel","tag-journalism","tag-meta","tag-paragon","tag-paragon-solutions","tag-spyware","tag-whatsapp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2025\/02\/francesco-cancellato.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}