WASHINGTON: An official with Meta’s popular WhatsApp chat service said the Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions had targeted scores of its users, including journalists and members of civil society.
The official said on Friday that WhatsApp had sent Paragon a cease-and-desist letter following the hacking. In a statement, WhatsApp said the company “will continue to protect people’s ability to communicate privately.”
Paragon declined to comment.
The WhatsApp official told Reuters that it had detected an effort to hack approximately 90 users of its platform.
The official declined to say who, specifically, was targeted or where they were geographically, saying only that targets included an unspecified number of civil society and media figures. He said WhatsApp had since “disrupted” the hacking effort.
The official declined to discuss how it ascertained that Paragon was responsible for the hacking. He said law enforcement and “industry partners” had been informed of the hacking, but declined to go into detail.
It may be noted that in 2023, Meta had clearly refuted the claims of considering adding ads to the widely-used messaging platform, as reported by TechCrunch.
The speculation had arisen following a report by the Financial Times, which suggested that certain teams within Meta were exploring the feasibility of incorporating ads within lists of conversations on the WhatsApp home screen.
However, WhatsApp had then firmly dismissed those claims, asserting that it was neither conducting tests nor actively developing such a feature.
For years, industry analysts have pondered Meta’s strategy for monetising WhatsApp, a platform regularly accessed by more than 2 billion users globally.