The Italian government said in a press release on Wednesday that a spyware campaign revealed by WhatsApp, and carried out with spyware made by Paragon Solutions, targeted people across several countries in Europe.
The government led by far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni denied being behind the targeting of Italian citizens Francesco Cancellato, a journalist who heads the news website Fanpage.it, and Luca Casarini, an activist that works for Mediterranea Saving Humans, a non-government organization that helps immigrants.
In the release, the government said that the its defensive cybersecurity organization, the Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale (ACN — or National Cybersecurity Agency) contacted WhatsApp and its law firm Advant, which told the authorities that there are seven mobile phone users in Italy who were targeted in the spyware campaign. WhatsApp declined to provide the identities of the targets citing privacy concerns, the government’s statement read.
WhatsApp also said that there are mobile phone users in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, based on their country phone codes, according to the Italian government’s statement.
WhatsApp did not immediately respond to a request for comment, asking to confirm the number of targets in Italy, the countries mentioned by the Italian government, and the other claims attributed to WhatsApp by the Italian government.
The Italian government’s statement arrives days after WhatsApp said that it had disrupted a spyware campaign targeting around 90 users in over two dozen countries, including several in Europe.
As of Wednesday, Cancellato, Casarini, and a Sweden-based Libyan activist Husam El Gomati, who has been critical of the Italian and Libyan governments’ activities against immigrants in the Mediterranean Sea, have come forward saying they were targets of the spyware campaign.
Paragon told TechCrunch on Tuesday that it sells its surveillance technology to the U.S. government and other unspecified “allies.”
The company also said that it “requires that all users agree to terms and conditions that explicitly prohibit the illicit targeting of journalists and other civil society figures,” adding that it has a “zero-tolerance policy” against such targeting. The spyware maker said it would “terminate our relationship with any customer” that violates its terms of service.
Fleming and Paragon have not responded to requests for comment for this article, asking to confirm or deny whether the countries mentioned by the Italian government are indeed Paragon customers.
Italy’s ACN, as well as the Prime Minister’s office, did not respond to a request for comment.
