Paragon is not cooperating with Italian authorities investigating spyware attacks, the report said

Last year, WhatsApp and Apple notified several people in Italy, including journalists and activists, that they had been targeted by government spyware. In particular, WhatsApp pointed the finger at Israeli-American surveillance technology company Paragon Solutions as the company that provided the technology for a hacking campaign that targeted around 90 people worldwide with its ‘Graphite’ spyware.

The disclosures sparked a scandal in Italy that is still unfolding. After being notified of the attacks, some victims filed criminal complaints with Italian authorities and prosecutors opened an investigation.

It now appears that Paragon, despite earlier promises to help Italian authorities investigate the scandal, is said to be uncooperative.

According to Wired ItalyItalian prosecutors sent a formal request for information to Paragon, through the Israeli government, but a year after investigations began, the company has yet to respond.

After the spyware scandal broke in Italy, Paragon publicly called out the Italian government, alleging that it refused the company’s offer to investigate whether a journalist was hacked and spied on with the Graphite spyware. The company went so far as to cancel its contract with Italy’s two spy agencies, AISE and AISI, in part because the Italian government rejected the company’s offer to help.

It is unclear why Paragon did not respond to the prosecutor’s request. It is possible that the Israeli government intervened. In 2024, the Guardian reported that the Israeli government seized documents from NSO’s office to prevent the company from complying with the demands of the lawsuit against WhatsApp.

Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack told Wired Italy that the Israeli government could force local companies to cooperate with foreign court requests for information, “but that never happened.”

Supreme Court of Spain closed his investigation earlier this year on NSO’s use of spyware to target Spanish politicians, claiming that Israeli authorities have not cooperated with its investigation.

Paragon, the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., and prosecutors 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’s extremely rare for a company to publicly fall out with one of its former clients. Paragon’s move was likely prompted by its long-standing efforts to present itself as a seemingly fairer alternative to other spyware makers such as NSO Group or Intellexa, which have been embroiled in countless scandals around the world.

Instead, Paragon’s official website, which no longer loads, he said the company provides clients with “tools, teams and knowledge based on ethics.”

So far, this is Paragon’s first public scandal, but the company now has an active contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been detaining and deporting tens of thousands of immigrants across the country for a year. ICE told lawmakers that its law enforcement division, the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, uses Paragon’s spyware to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.

Italy’s government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has always denied hacking two of the journalists, Francesco Cancellato and Ciro Pellegrino, who work for the online news site Fanpage and whose phones were targeted by Paragon’s Graphite. Citizen Lab, a research organization that has investigated spyware abuses for more than a decade, confirmed that both journalists had been hacked with Graphite.

The other victims in the country include activists working for Mediterranea Saving Humans, an Italian non-profit organization tasked with rescuing migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

Last June, the Italian parliamentary committee that oversees the country’s spy agencies investigated the scandal and concluded that the targeting of activists was legal. But he also said he could find no evidence that Cancelato was a target and the commission did not investigate Pellegrino’s case at all.

Then in March, the same prosecutors who 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 was unable to reach the same conclusion after analyzing Pellegrino’s phone.

The prosecutor’s investigation is still ongoing.