Researchers name several countries as potential Paragon spyware customers

The governments of Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore are likely customers of Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions, according to a new technical report by a renowned digital security lab. On Wednesday, The Citizen Lab, a group of academics and security researchers housed at the University of Toronto that has investigated the spyware industry for more than a decade, published a report about the Israeli-founded surveillance startup, identifying the six governments as “suspected Paragon deployments.” At the end of January, WhatsApp notified around 90 users that the company believed were targeted with Paragon spyware, prompting a scandal in Italy, where some of the targets live. Paragon has long tried to distinguish itself from competitors, such as NSO Group — whose spyware has been abused in several countries — by claiming to be a more responsible spyware vendor. In 2021, an unnamed senior Paragon executive told Forbes that authoritarian or non-democratic regi ... Read full article.