Belgian and Dutch numbers, among others, were targeted in an advanced spying attempt discovered by WhatsApp. Israeli software was allegedly at the root of it.
Last week, WhatsApp announced that nearly 100 users were targeted by a spyware attack. Now a communiqué from the Italian government reveals that Belgians and Dutch, among others, were targeted by the unprecedented attackers. Other victims have cell phone numbers linked to Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Oust Kingdom, Cypress, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
WhatsApp does not share the identity of those affected, but has notified them personally. The Italian government is taking the incident very seriously and plans to follow it up.
Israeli source
WhatsApp discovered the attack attempt itself and was able to link it to Graphite spyware from the Israeli company Paragon. That software can be compared to Pegasus from the also Israeli NSO Group. The companies make very sophisticated malware for espionage purposes, which when successfully attacked is activated even without action by the victim on a smartphone.
Israeli companies make the spyware, but Israel does not necessarily bear responsibility for its effective implementation. After all, NSO Group and Paragon are allowed to sell their software to third parties. Previous research has already shown that love of human rights is not an important criterion for whether or not an export license is granted.