Italy has terminated a contract with Israeli spyware maker Paragon, a parliamentary document showed on Monday, following allegations that the Italian government used its technology to hack critics’ phones. Paragon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Meta’s WhatsApp chat service said earlier this year Paragon spyware had targeted scores of users, including a journalist and members of the Mediterranea migrant sea rescue charity critical of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The government said in February that seven mobile phone users in Italy had been targeted by the spyware. Rome denied any involvement in illicit activities and said it had asked the National Cybersecurity Agency to look into the affair.
Read more…
Source: MSN News
Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.
Related:
- Apple notifies new victims of spyware attacks across the world
April 30, 2025
Apple sent notifications this week to several people who the company believes were targeted with government spyware, according to two of the alleged targets. In the past, Apple has sent similar notifications to targets and victims of spyware, and directed them to contact a nonprofit that specializes in investigating such cyberattacks. Other tech companies, like Google ...
- Researcher uncovers dozens of sketchy Chrome extensions with 4 million installs
April 11, 2025
Google is hosting dozens of extensions in its Chrome Web Store that perform suspicious actions on the more than 4 million devices that have installed them and that their developers have taken pains to carefully conceal. The extensions, which so far number at least 35, use the same code patterns, connect to some of the same ...
- Court document reveals locations of WhatsApp victims targeted by NSO spyware
April 9, 2025
NSO Group’s notorious spyware Pegasus was used to target 1,223 WhatsApp users in 51 different countries during a 2019 hacking campaign, according to a new court document. The document was published on Friday as part of the lawsuit that Meta-owned WhatsApp filed against NSO Group in 2019, accusing the surveillance tech maker of exploiting a ...
- BADBAZAAR and MOONSHINE: Spyware targeting Uyghur, Taiwanese and Tibetan groups and civil society actors
April 9, 2025
MOONSHINE and BADBAZAAR are examples of trojans; they have malicious functions hidden inside an otherwise functioning app that can be downloaded from app stores or online file-sharing services. These apps are designed to trick a user into downloading and installing them on a device. Once an app is installed, it uses vulnerabilities on the device to ...
- Again and again, NSO Group’s customers keep getting their spyware operations caught
March 28, 2025
On Thursday, Amnesty International published a new report detailing attempted hacks against two Serbian journalists, allegedly carried out with NSO Group’s spyware Pegasus. The two journalists, who work for the Serbia-based Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), received suspicious text messages including a link — basically a phishing attack, according to the nonprofit. In one case, Amnesty ...
- Data breach at stalkerware SpyX affects close to 2 million, including thousands of Apple users
March 19, 2025
A consumer-grade spyware operation called SpyX was hit by a data breach last year, TechCrunch has learned. The breach reveals that SpyX and two other related mobile apps had records on almost 2 million people at the time of the breach, including thousands of Apple users. The data breach dates back to June 2024 but had ...