Friday, Meta-Cononstité said that he had disrupted a campaign that involved the use of spy software to target journalists and civil society members.
The campaign, which was targeting approximately 90 members, involved the use of spy software from an Israeli company known as Paragon Solutions. The attackers were neutralized in December 2024.
In a statement to The Guardian, the encrypted messaging application said it had contacted affected users, declaring that it had “great confidence” that users were targeted and “possibly compromised”. We do not currently know who is behind the campaign and for how long it took place.
The attack chain would be zero click, which means that the deployment of spy software occurs without requiring user interaction. It is suspected of involving the distribution of a specially designed PDF file sent to people who have been added to group cats on WhatsApp.
The company also revealed that it had sent Paragon a letter “stop and abstain” and that it was considering other options. Development marks the first time that the company has been linked to cases where its technology has been poorly used.
Like NSO Group, Paragon is the surveillance software manufacturer called graphite offered to government customers in order to combat digital threats. It was acquired by an investment group based in the United States AE Industrial Partners in December in an agreement worth $ 500 million.
On its Barebones website, the company says it provides customers “ethical tools” to “disrupt insoluble threats”, as well as to offer “cyber and medico-light capacities to locate and analyze digital data” .
At the end of 2022, it appeared that the graphite was used by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for order operations. Last year, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) called the Department of Homeland Security to publish details on its $ 2 million contract with Paragon.
The news in the campaign comes for weeks after a judge in California has ruled in favor of WhatsApp in a historic case against the NSO group for having used its infrastructure in order to deliver the PEGASUS spy software to 1,400 aircraft in May 2019.
Meta’s disclosure has also coincided with the arrest of the former Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro for allegations according to which he sanctioned the use of PEGASUS spy software to monitor the opposition leaders and supervised cases where Technology has been used.