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

Last year, WhatsApp and Apple notified several people in Italy, including journalists and activists, that they were targeted by government spyware. In particular, WhatsApp pointed the finger at the American surveillance technology manufacturer Paragon Solutions as the company that provided the technology for the hacking campaign that targeted about 90 people worldwide with its “Graphite” spyware.

The announcements caused a scandal in Italy that continues. After being informed of the attack, several victims filed complaints with Italian authorities, and prosecutors opened an investigation.

Now it seems that Paragon, despite its previous promises to help the Italian authorities investigate the scandal, is said to be ineffective.

According to Wired Italy, Italian prosecutors sent an official request for information to Paragon, through the Israeli government, but a year after the investigation was opened, the company has yet to respond.

Following the outbreak of the spyware scandal in Italy, Paragon publicly called out the Italian government, saying it was rejecting the company’s request to investigate whether a journalist had been hacked and hacked by its Graphite spyware. The company even canceled its contract with two Italian spy agencies, AISE and AISI, in part because the Italian government refused the company’s request for help.

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

Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack told Wired Italy that the Israeli government can compel domestic companies to cooperate with foreign judges’ requests for information, “but this has never happened.”

Spain’s Supreme Court closed its investigation earlier this year into the use of NSO’s spyware to target Spanish politicians, saying Israeli authorities were not cooperating with its investigation.

Paragon, the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, and the prosecutor’s 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 very rare for a company to have a public dispute with one of its former clients. The movement of Paragon may have been inspired by its long-term efforts to appear more fair to other spy makers, such as NSO Group or Intellixa, caught in the trap of many scandals around the world.

Instead, Paragon’s official website, which is no longer loaded, said the company provides clients with “tools, teams, and behavior-based insights.”

So far, this is Paragon’s first public scandal, but the company now has an active contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which annually arrests and deports tens of thousands of immigrants across the country. ICE told lawmakers that its law enforcement arm Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) uses Paragon spying to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.

The Italian government under Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni has consistently denied hacking two journalists, Francesco Cancellato and Ciro Pellegrino, who work for the online news website Fanpage and whose phones were targeted by Paragon’s Graphite. Citizen Lab, a research organization that has investigated spyware exploits for over a decade, confirmed that both journalists were being hacked by Graphite.

Other victims in the country include activists working for Mediterranea Saving Humans, an Italian non-profit organization whose mission is to rescue migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

Last June, the Italian parliamentary committee in charge of the country’s intelligence agencies investigated the scandal, and concluded that the targeting of these activists was legal. But it also said it could find no evidence that Cancellato was targeted, and the committee did not investigate Pellegrino’s case at all.

Then in March, the same prosecutors who requested information from Paragon in a press release said that a forensic examination of Cancellato’s device confirmed that his phone had been hacked, but could not conclude the same after analyzing Pellegrino’s phone.

The prosecutor’s investigation is still ongoing.