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🚨NEW INVESTIGATION: We just forensically unmasked #Paragon 's Apple spyware.

Zero-click targets: Journalists. In 🇪🇺Europe.

Like 🇮🇹Italian reporter Ciro Pellegrino

Reopen's #Italy's spyware scandal.

Follows our earlier Citizenlab investigation of Paragon Android spyware.

BACKGROUND

Back in April, #Apple sent out a threat notification to a select group of users. Some got in touch with us to get analyzed.

WHAT WE FOUND

They'd been targeted with a sophisticated zero-click attack (think: no click, no attachment to open, no mistake needed...).

While my brilliant colleague Bill Marczak was working on the phone of a prominent European journalist, he made a smoking gun discovery:

Requests to server matching our P1 fingerprint for #Paragon's graphite.

Paragon's 'undetectable' Apple spyware had just been found... Just as we'd found their Android spyware some months ago.

The prominent European journalist had another spicy indicator on their iPhone logs:

An iMessage account belonging to a particular #Paragon customer...used to deploy this zero-click attack.

We call this account ATTACKER1. We'd find them again in short order...

Earlier this year we uncovered #Paragon's Android spyware after #WhatsApp notified a group of users they'd been targeted with Paragon.

One of the notification recipients? Journalist Francesco Cancellato

His outlet http://fanpage.it had done bombshell reporting that displeased the Italian government.

Then, in April, his colleague Ciro Pellegrino also gets a notification.

His is from Apple (Cannot overstate how helpful these notifications are)

We analyze Ciro's iPhone & forensically confirm he's a Paragon target.

And we find the ATTACKER1 iMessage account again!

ITALIAN DRAMA This week #Paragon and #Italy have been locking horns over the case of Francesco Cancellato. Paragon doesn't want to be stuck w/unexplained abuses against journalists.

I think Paragon likely want to be able put to it on a customer & wash hands...

But when your customer is a government... they clap back. So Italy has been threatening to declassify things like Paragon's testimony to their intelligence oversight committee. Spicy.

BIG QUESTION

We're left with a big question: who's hacking European journalists with Paragon?

Who targeted Francesco & Ciro?

Right now they have no answers.

Bad look for Paragon. Bad look for Italy.

Curious what Paragon knows about that server...

BIG PICTURE Paragon's marketing was the 'clean' & stealthy opposite of NSO Group.

Yet Paragon's Apple and Android tech got caught.

And they can't shake a spyware abuse scandal.

Conclusion: the problem isn't just a few bad apples, abuse is axiomatic.

And discovery is a matter of time.

APPLE USERS: One bit of good news, Apple tells us that the zero-click attack deployed in these cases was mitigated as of iOS 18.3.1.

That's #CVE-2025-43200 for the curious.

Make sure to keep your iPhones up to date. And get in touch if you get one of these advanced threat notifications.

OUR FULL REPORT: https://citizenlab.ca/2025/06/first-forensic-confirmation-of-paragons-ios-mercenary-spyware-finds-journalists-targeted/

🚨NEW REPORT: first forensic confirmation of #Paragon mercenary spyware infections in #Italy...

Known targets: Activists & journalists.

We also found deployments around the world. Including ...Canada?

https://m.primal.net/Pljg.png https://m.primal.net/Plji.png

So #Paragon makes zero-click spyware marketed as better than NSO's Pegasus...

Harder to find... https://m.primal.net/Pljo.png

...And more ethical too!

This caught our attention at #Citizenlab. And we were skeptical. https://m.primal.net/Pljq.png

So.. it was time to start digging. https://m.primal.net/Pljr.png

We got a tip about a single bit of #Paragon infrastructure & my brilliant colleague Bill Marczak developed a technique to fingerprint some of the mercenary spyware infrastructure (both victim-facing & customer side) globally. https://m.primal.net/Pljv.png So much for invisibility.

What we found startled us.

We found a bunch of apparent deployments of Paragon's mercenary spyware in places like #Australia, #Denmark, #Israel, #Cyprus #Singapore and... #Canada.

Fun. https://m.primal.net/Pljz.png

We also found interesting stuff at a datacenter in #Germany https://m.primal.net/PlkB.png

Caveats: the methodology we use only surfaces a subset of customers at a particular time.

So ...about #Canada.

My colleagues on the legal side began digging. The more they pulled, the more questions surfaced about whether the Ontario Provincial Police is rolling mercenary spyware. https://m.primal.net/PlkJ.png

While investigating, we found signs #WhatsApp was being used as a vector for infections.

We shared our analysis with Meta which had an ongoing investigation into Paragon.

They shared findings with WhatsApp which discovered & mitigated a zero-click attack.

They went public, and notified ~90 users that they believed were targeted.

WhatsApp's notifications to targets turbocharged what we all knew about #Paragon.

Cases began coming out: an investigative journalist in #Italy and sea rescue activists were among the first. Francesco Cancellato. Editor in Chief of Fanpage.it, & Luca Casarini and Dr. Giuseppe “Beppe” Caccia of Mediterranea Saving Humans

They consented to us doing a forensic analysis... https://m.primal.net/Plkc.png

Sure enough, we found traces of infection on several Androids.

We call the indicator #BIGPRETZEL & #WhatsApp confirms that they believe BIGPRETZEL is associated with #Paragon's spyware.

In the weeds a bit: Android log forensics are tricky. Logs get overwritten fast, are captured sporadically & may not go back very far. So, not finding BIGPRETZEL on a targeted phone wouldn't be enough to say it wasn't infected. In such a case, the only safe course of action for a notified Paragon target would be to presume they had been infected.

Our analysis is ongoing.

.... but There's more!

There's more! We'd been analyzing the iPhone of human rights activist David Yambio, who is focused on abuses against migrants in Libya (they are often victims of torture, trafficking, and killings) who works closely with the other targets. https://m.primal.net/Plki.png

Last year he got notified by Apple that he was targeted with sophisticated spyware.

We've forensically confirmed the infection & shared details with Apple.

Apple confirms they fixed the vectors used to target him as of iOS 18.

We're not doing a full technical attribution of this novel spyware to a particular company yet. But it's not like anything we've seen.

Troublingly, timeline of David's spyware targeting lines up with when he was providing information to the International Criminal Court about torture by human traffickers in #Libya.

But there's even more spying afoot against this cluster of activists!

Luca also got a notification last February about targeting with a different kind of surveillance tech. https://m.primal.net/Plkp.png

He wasn't alone. Father Mattia Ferrari, chaplain of Luca's lifesaving organization' also got a notification.

#Italy's response to the unfolding #Paragon scandal has been exceptionally chaotic. So we included a little timeline.

Denials, then admissions, then refusals to say more citing secrecy. https://m.primal.net/Plks.png

Honestly, deja vu of how Pegasus-abusing governments have handled PR...

TAKEAWAYS:

TAKEAWAY 1: you can't abuse-proof mercenary spyware. Selling just democracies won't prevent abuses. Most democracies have plenty of historic examples of surveillance abuses. Why should spyware be different?

TAKEAWAY 2: #Paragon's technical tradeoffs to be less detectable didn't prevent them getting discovered.

Just made it harder.

TAKEAWAY 3: I think we're only looking at the tip the #Paragon hackberg

For example, the ~90 notification number from #WhatsApp only represents 1 infection vector that got caught & notified.

There may be non-notified spyware victims walking around right now who were infected via a different mechanism.

In #Italy, too we also need to better understand the other surveillance technologies pointed at this cluster of people.

Finally, we gave #Paragon room to respond to a summary of our key findings.

Their US Executive Chairman, a 30+ year #CIA veteran, responded in a way that sounded very familiar to how NSO Group did PR.

1 - Say there are inaccuracies.. 2- ..But refuse to specify them 3-Cite customer confidentiality as a reason to not say more.

We welcome any clarifications they have now that they've read our full report.

FINAL NOTES: our #citizenlab investigations are usually big, collaborative team productions. Smart co-authors, awesome collaborators. https://m.primal.net/PllG.png

The key to nearly all our research into spyware is targets' brave choice to speak out.

And work with us to forensically analyze their devices... We are very grateful to them.

This is how we collectively get a better understanding of mercenary spyware abuses.

And journey towards accountability.

Thanks for reading! Drop questions in the replies!

READ THE FULL REPORT https://citizenlab.ca/2025/03/a-first-look-at-paragons-proliferating-spyware-operations/