Associated Incidents
New forensic findings have confirmed that another Italian journalist was targeted with Israeli-made spyware, deepening the scandal surrounding the alleged misuse of Paragon's surveillance technology inside Italy.
The scandal began in January when journalist Francesco Cancellato received information from WhatsApp, saying his phone may have been hacked. It was subsequently discovered that another Italian journalist's iPhone had been hacked using Graphite, a military-grade spyware developed by Israel's Paragon Solutions.
Pellegrino, a bureau chief at the Italian news outlet Fanpage, was delivered a zero-click iMessage exploit, which triggered an official Apple warning stating that he had been targeted with "mercenary spyware."
The new evidence, uncovered by the Toronto-based watchdog Citizen Lab and published Thursday by Fanpage, comes just days after Italy's parliamentary intelligence committee, Copasir, concluded its inquiry into the alleged misuse of Paragon's spyware.
The probe reviewed four cases, three involving human rights activists, whose infections were confirmed, and one involving Cancellato, who is Fanpage's editor-in-chief.
His Android phone was targeted via WhatsApp, but Copasir found no conclusive evidence that it had been hacked by Italy. The Italian committee did not examine Pellegrino's case, which had been made public after the committee first formed.
In response to the committee's findings, Paragon accused Italian authorities of refusing to carry out a full technical verification, a claim it said could have settled the matter.
The confirmation of a second journalist from the same news outlet being targeted by the spyware contradicts the committee's central claim. This reinforces concerns that spyware intended for counterterrorism operations was deployed against members of the press who were critical of the Italian government.
On Monday, an Italian parliamentary inquiry committee announced that the contract between the European country's intelligence services and Paragon has been canceled.
Paragon cited an Italian decision not to proceed with a proposed technical process that would have confirmed if its spyware was used against a prominent journalist.
"The company offered both the Italian government and parliament a way to determine whether its system had been used against the journalist," and since "Italian authorities chose not to proceed with this solution, Paragon terminated its contracts in Italy," Paragon said in a statement.
Last week, a special Italian parliamentary committee confirmed that the country's intelligence services used the Graphite spyware developed by Paragon to hack the phones of pro-immigration activists.