The Secrets of the US Spyware King
In an exclusive interview with WIRED, Paragon Solutions CEO Andrew Boyd reveals the limits of the company’s promise to keep bad actors from abusing its powerful espionage tool.
In December 2024, the US equity firm AE Industrial Partners acquired the Israeli-owned spyware company Paragon and merged it with the American offensive cyber firm REDLattice. WhatsApp alleged that Paragon's Graphite spyware had been used to infect over 60 individuals in more than 20 countries, including journalists and activists. The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab identified two journalists and two activists in Italy as potential targets. However, Italian authorities denied any misuse.
Paragon and its new US owners, despite having a zero-tolerance policy for customer abuse, initially declined to comment on the allegations and reportedly explored potential legal action against WhatsApp after the company sent a cease-and-desist letter. However, within a week, Paragon canceled contracts with Italy's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies.
Paragon's new CEO, Andrew Boyd, revealed in an exclusive interview with WIRED that the company simply "fired" Italy due to it "just not being worth it, from a risk perspective, to maintain the relationship." Boyd stated that there was no Paragon investigation into the allegations, and the company didn't follow up with WhatsApp or Citizen Lab to determine if any contracts in other countries should be canceled.
Critics argue that Boyd's comments reveal that despite Paragon's claims of being better than competitors, the company has less oversight and accountability than NSO Group, the Pegasus spyware maker. NSO claims to have a kill switch to disable customers' access to the spyware if allegations of misuse arise and keeps tamper-proof logs to record user activity.
However, Paragon does not have access to these logs and has no way of knowing if customers misuse its software. Boyd described this lack of access to logs as a selling point, emphasizing that no one would buy their products if Paragon could see sensitive targeting information. He claimed that careful customer vetting and rejecting countries prone to abuse were key to achieving a balance between privacy and security.
Written by urgent.news from Wired's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
