Meta's WhatsApp Says Israeli Spyware Company Paragon Targeted Users

A woman uses her phone next to a logo of the WhatsApp application during Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, India September 20, 2022. (Reuters)
A woman uses her phone next to a logo of the WhatsApp application during Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, India September 20, 2022. (Reuters)
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Meta's WhatsApp Says Israeli Spyware Company Paragon Targeted Users

A woman uses her phone next to a logo of the WhatsApp application during Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, India September 20, 2022. (Reuters)
A woman uses her phone next to a logo of the WhatsApp application during Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, India September 20, 2022. (Reuters)

An official with Meta's popular WhatsApp chat service said 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 hack. 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 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 people in civil society and media. He said WhatsApp had since disrupted the hacking effort and was referring targets to Canadian internet watchdog group Citizen Lab.

The official declined to discuss how it ascertained that Paragon was responsible for the hack. He said law enforcement and industry partners had been informed, but declined to go into detail.

The FBI did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton said the discovery of Paragon spyware targeting WhatsApp users "is a reminder that mercenary spyware continues to proliferate and as it does, so we continue to see familiar patterns of problematic use."

Spyware merchants such as Paragon sell high-end surveillance software to government clients and typically pitch their services as critical to fighting crime and protecting national security.

But such spy tools have repeatedly been discovered on the phones of journalists, activists, opposition politicians, and at least 50 US officials, raising concerns over the unchecked proliferation of the technology.

Paragon - which was reportedly acquired by Florida-based investment group AE Industrial Partners last month - has tried to position itself publicly as one of the industry's more responsible players.

The company's website advertises "ethically based tools, teams, and insights to disrupt intractable threats," and media reports citing people familiar with the company say Paragon only sells to governments in stable democratic countries.

Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at the advocacy group Access Now, said Paragon had the reputation of being a better spyware company, "but WhatsApp's recent revelations suggest otherwise."

"This is not just a question of some bad apples — these types of abuses (are) a feature of the commercial spyware industry."

AE did not immediately return a message seeking comment.



Microsoft Looks to Boost AI Performance in European Languages

FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
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Microsoft Looks to Boost AI Performance in European Languages

FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo

US tech behemoth Microsoft is investing millions of dollars to funnel more European-language data into AI development, company president Brad Smith told AFP Monday.

With today's leading AI models mostly trained on material in English, "the survival of these languages and the health of these cultures is quite literally at stake" without a course correction, Smith said in an interview.

AI models are "less capable when it is in a language that has insufficient data," he added -- which could push more users to switch to English even when it is not their native language.

Microsoft will from September set up research units in the eastern French city Strasbourg to "help expand the availability of multilingual data for AI development" in at least 10 of the European Union's 24 languages, including Estonian and Greek.

The work will include digitizing books and recording hundreds of hours of audio.

"This isn't about creating data for Microsoft to own. It is about creating data for the public to be able to use," Smith said, adding that the information would be shared on an open-source basis.

The US-based company has in recent months striven to position itself as especially compatible with a gathering political push for European technological sovereignty.

Leaders in the bloc have grown increasingly nervous at their dependency on US tech firms and infrastructure since Donald Trump's reelection to the White House.

In June, Microsoft said it was stepping up cooperation with European governments on cybersecurity and announced new "data sovereignty" measures for its data centers on the continent.

Smith said that Monday's announcement was just the latest evidence of the company's commitment to Europe.

Most leading AI firms are American or Chinese, although Europe has some standouts like France's Mistral or Franco-American platform Hugging Face.

Away from Microsoft, some European initiatives such as TildeLM are pushing to develop local-language AI models.

The Windows and Office developer also said Monday that it was working on a digital recreation of Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral that it plans to gift to the French state, as well as digitizing items from the country's BNF national library and Decorative Arts Museum.