On Friday, at 2:48 pm, Francesco Cancellado received a sinister notification on his cell phone while he was at home near Milan.
“This is a WhatsApp message,” said the message in Italian, which britcommerce obtained. “In December, WhatsApp interrupted the activities of a Spyware company that we believe attacked its device. Our investigations indicate that they may have received a harmful file through WhatsApp and that the Spyware may have resulted in accessing its data, including messages saved on the device. ”
“We have made changes to prevent this specific attack from happening again. However, the operating system of its device can remain compromised due to the Spyware, ”the message continued.
Cancellate is the first objective to present after the dissemination of a piracy campaign carried out using Spyware supposedly made by Paragon Solutions, as WhatsApp said Friday.
At that time, WhatsApp said the espionage campaign was addressed to around 90 people, including journalists such as Cancellate and members of civil society worldwide, even in Europe.
“I feel raped,” Cancellate told britcommerce. He said at first he thought that the message was a scam or a joke. “You always think in some way that a journalist could serpened or spied, but you do it more outside your own paranoia and exorcise the fact that you can be. When someone tells you that it is true, you tend not to believe it, you always tend to think that it is something else. “
Then he said he realized that it was real. “You wonder, why me? This is the thing, I mean, what did they want from me?
“That is the first question, the second question is what did they take me? Where were they? What did they do to me? Once they entered my phone, where there is basically my whole life, my vacations, my friends, my family, my bank passwords, there is everything, my work things, ”said Cancallate. “And then the third question is who did?”
Cancellado is the director of Fanpage.itan Italian news website that is known for research in corruption, organized crime, the Catholic Church and The youth wing of the Extrem Right ruling party in Italy, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
That’s why Multi -parts research Last year, Fanpage sent undercover journalists to infiltrate the “Meloniana Giventù”, a group that is part of the Fratelli Party of Italy of Meloni, who has ruled Italy since 2022. The investigation showed videos of several party members they make Racist comments against Jewish and black people, singing the words and Nazi slogans, and singing about the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.
Contact us
Do you have more information about Paragon and this Spyware campaign? From a non-labor device, you can communicate with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai safely on the signal to +1 917 257 1382, or by telegram and keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You can also communicate with britcommerce through Securedrop.
Cancellate said he decided leave publicly Because, as a journalist, his work is to inform the news. However, he said he didn’t want to speculate who was behind him. At this point, there are many unanswered questions. Including if his phone was pirate or attacked without success, what the hackers were looking for and who ordered the attack.
WhatsApp said the piracy campaign was carried out by Paragon Solutions, a spyware manufacturer of the Israeli government that, according to reports, sells a product to spy on the encrypted applications, such as WhatsApp and Signal, called Graphite, As Forbes reported in 2021.
A WhatsApp spokesman did not respond to a request for comments asking if the company could confirm that Cancala was an objective.
The guardian He cited a person close to the company by saying that Paragon Solutions sold its products to 35 clients of the democratic government. And the Israeli YnetNews media reported On Monday that Italy is a Paragon client.
Also on Monday, The Guardian reported The Libyan activist based in Sweden, Husam El Gomati, was also notified by WhatsApp as one of the objectives of the piracy campaign. The Gomati He has been a member criticist Italy’s relationship with Libya, particularly an agreement between the two countries to prevent immigrants from crossing the Mediterranean.
britcommerce did not receive an answer after contacting the email address of the Italian government press office, as well as Fabrizio Alfano, the head of the Meloni press office, by email and WhatsApp.
Paragon Solutions has cultivated a reputation for being a responsible surveillance technology provider. On its official websiteThe company says that “it provides our customers with tools, equipment and ideas based on ethics to interrupt intractable threats.”
A source of Paragonless solutions He told New York Last year, the company’s agreement with the application of immigration and customs of the United States months before in September was the result of a research process in which the company allegedly demonstrated that it could prevent its technology from being used by Other countries against Americans, but not for the United States government.
Paragon Solutions was acquired in December 2024 by the American private capital giant AE Industrial Partners.
Paragon Solutions and AE Industrial did not respond to a request for comments.
WhatsApp’s message to Cancellate suggested that he could contact Citizen Lab, a group of digital rights at the University of Toront Spain.
Cancelato, who said he and Fanpage contacted the authorities, told britcommerce that “he did what the message asked me to do.”
“Actually, it is quite strange that a journalist looks in a western democracy,” said Cancellado, adding that the directed phone was his company’s device, so it is an attack on Fanpage; it is not an attack against me “