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:
- 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 ...
- Amazon is still hosting spyware victims’ data weeks after breach alert
March 13, 2025
Amazon will not say if it plans to take action against three phone surveillance apps that are storing troves of individuals’ private phone data on Amazon’s cloud servers, despite TechCrunch notifying the tech giant weeks earlier that it was hosting the stolen phone data. Amazon told TechCrunch it was “following process” after our February notice, ...
- New spyware found to be snooping on thousands of Android and iOS users
February 28, 2025
Hundreds of thousands of Android users, as well as several thousand iPhone users, have had their sensitive data compromised by a spouseware app, called Spyzie. The apps were found leaking email addresses, text messages, call logs, photographs, and other sensitive data, belonging to millions of people who, without their knowledge or consent, have had these apps ...
- Spyware maker caught distributing malicious Android apps for years
February 13, 2025
Italian spyware maker SIO, known to sell its products to government customers, is behind a series of malicious Android apps that masquerade as WhatsApp and other popular apps but steal private data from a target’s device, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Late last year, a security researcher shared three Android apps with TechCrunch, claiming they were likely ...