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. Spyware maker Paragon Solutions has long positioned itself as the good guy in an industry seemingly filled with bad ones, vowing to never sell its mobile spyware to authoritarian regimes or ones with poor human rights records. It also promises to cut off any customer caught misusing its products against journalists, dissidents, or other non-legitimate targets. Yet weeks after Paragon, then Israeli-owned, was acquired by the US equity firm AE Industrial Partners in December 2024 and merged with REDLattice--an American offensive cyber firm owned by AE that this week announced plans to go public --WhatsApp alleged that Paragon's Graphite spyware was used to infect the phones of more than 60 individuals in more than 20 countries, including journalists and activists. Most of the targets were not identified, but the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab named two journalists and two activists in Italy. Italian authorities denied misuse . Paragon and its new US owners, despite their zero-tolerance policy for customer abuse of their software, initially declined to comment on the allegations, and reportedly was exploring potential legal action against WhatsApp after the company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Paragon.