Paragon is not collaborating with Italian authorities probing spyware attacks, report says
Paragon Solutions is reportedly not cooperating with Italian authorities investigating spyware attacks despite previous promises to assist. The company has faced scrutiny after being linked to a hacking campaign that targeted journalists and activists in Italy. Paragon's lack of response to a formal request for information from prosecutors raises questions about potential government intervention.
- ▪WhatsApp and Apple notified individuals in Italy that they were targeted with government spyware last year.
- ▪Paragon Solutions has been accused of providing the technology for a hacking campaign that affected around 90 people globally.
- ▪Despite offering to help investigate the hacking of a journalist, Paragon has not responded to a formal request from Italian prosecutors.
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| Original publisher | TechCrunch |
| Canonical URL | https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/28/paragon-is-not-collaborating-with-italian-authorities-probing-spyware-attacks-report-says/ |
| Publication time | Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:46:47 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-04-28T17:59:40.768Z |
| Last seen | 2026-04-28T17:59:40.768Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | VIZPVlxFp9IE |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Last year, WhatsApp and Apple notified several people in Italy, including journalists and activists, that they had been targeted with government spyware. In particular, WhatsApp pointed the finger at the Israeli American surveillance tech maker Paragon Solutions as the company that provided the technology for a hacking campaign that targeted around 90 people around the world with its “Graphite” spyware. The notifications prompted a scandal in Italy that is still unfolding. After being notified of the attacks, a number of victims filed criminal complaints with Italian authorities, and prosecutors then opened an investigation. Now it appears that Paragon, despite its previous promises to help Italian authorities investigate the scandal, is said to be uncollaborative.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechCrunch.
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