Paragon is not collaborating with Italian authorities probing spyware attacks, report says
Source: TechCrunch
Overview
Last year, WhatsApp and Apple notified several people in Italy—including journalists and activists—that they had been targeted with government‑grade spyware. In particular, WhatsApp pointed the finger at the Israeli‑American surveillance‑tech maker Paragon Solutions (link) as the provider of the “Graphite” spyware used in a campaign that hit roughly 90 people worldwide.
The notifications sparked a scandal in Italy that is still unfolding. After being alerted, a number of victims filed criminal complaints with Italian authorities, prompting prosecutors to open an investigation.
Now it appears that Paragon, despite its previous promises to help Italian authorities investigate the scandal, is being uncooperative.
According to Wired Italy, Italian prosecutors sent a formal request for information to Paragon—via the Israeli government—but a year after the investigations were opened the company has yet to respond.
Following the eruption of the spyware scandal in Italy, Paragon publicly called out the Italian government (TechCrunch article), claiming the state refused the company’s offer to investigate whether a journalist had been hacked with its Graphite spyware. In protest, Paragon cancelled its contracts with Italy’s two spy agencies, AISE and AISI, citing the government’s refusal to cooperate.
It’s unclear why Paragon has not responded to the prosecutor’s request. One possibility is Israeli government interference. In 2024, The Guardian reported that the Israeli government seized documents from NSO’s office to prevent the company from complying with a lawsuit against WhatsApp (link). Israeli human‑rights lawyer Eitay Mack told Wired Italy that the Israeli government could force local companies to cooperate with foreign judicial requests for information, “but this has never happened.”
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Spain’s High Court closed its investigation earlier this year into the use of NSO’s spyware to target Spanish politicians, claiming Israeli authorities did not cooperate with the probe (Reuters).
Contact
Do you have more information about Paragon Solutions and the spyware scandal in Italy? From a non‑work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi‑Bicchierai securely on:
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Paragon, the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., and the prosecutors’ offices in Rome and Naples (which are jointly investigating the case) did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
In the history of government spyware, it is extremely rare for a company to enter a public fight with one of its former customers. Paragon’s move was likely motivated by its longstanding attempts to present itself as a more “righteous” alternative to other spyware makers such as NSO Group or Intellexa, both of which have been embroiled in numerous scandals worldwide.
Paragon’s official website—now offline—once claimed the company provides customers “with ethically based tools, teams, and insights” (archived snapshot).
So far, this is Paragon’s first public scandal, but the company now has an active contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For a year ICE has been arresting and deporting tens of thousands of immigrants nationwide. ICE told lawmakers that its law‑enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), is using Paragon’s spyware to counter terrorism and drug trafficking (TechCrunch).
Italy’s government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has consistently denied hacking two journalists—Francesco Cancellato and Ciro Pellegrino—who work for the online news site Fanpage and whose phones were targeted with Graphite. The Citizen Lab, a research organization that has investigated spyware abuses for more than a decade, confirmed both journalists were hacked with Graphite (TechCrunch).
Other victims in Italy include activists who work for Mediterranea Saving Humans, an Italian nonprofit that rescues migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea (TechCrunch – activist story 1, story 2).
Last June, the Italian parliamentary committee that oversees the country’s spy agencies investigated the scandal and concluded that the targeting of the activists was lawful (TechCrunch). However, the committee also said it could not find evidence that Cancellato was ta… (sentence truncated in source).
Targeted, and the committee did not investigate Pellegrino’s case at all.
Then, in March, the same prosecutors who have requested information from Paragon said in a press release that a forensic investigation into Cancellato’s device confirmed that his phone had indeed been hacked, while it could not conclude the same after analyzing Pellegrino’s phone.
The prosecutors’ investigation is still ongoing.
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Lorenzo Franceschi‑Bicchierai is a Senior Writer at TechCrunch, where he covers hacking, cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy.
You can contact or verify outreach from Lorenzo by emailing lorenzo@techcrunch.com, via encrypted message at +1 917 257 1382 on Signal, and @lorenzofb on Keybase/Telegram.