واٹس ایپ غیرمحفوظ بنادی گئی، اسرائیل کا یورپی صحافیوں و غیرسرکاری تنظیموں کی رازداری پر حملہ

Written by: Mohammad Reza Seyed

Meta’s chat service WhatsApp has said that about 100 journalists and other members of civil society who use the service were the targets of a Tel Aviv-based spyware campaign by an Israeli spyware company called Paragon Solutions. The Israeli company’s spyware has been widely used to target users of the WhatsApp platform, and it appears to have targeted individuals in Europe in particular. According to reports from WhatsApp’s parent company Meta, the spyware was used to access users’ phones, obtain sensitive data, monitor communications, or monitor journalists and other high-profile targets. A WhatsApp spokesperson told NBC News on Friday that Israel had targeted multiple users in more than two dozen countries, including European journalists and members of civil society, in this spyware attack. The Israeli government has taken reprehensible steps such as hacking journalists’ WhatsApp accounts with spyware to cover up war crimes committed by its military in Gaza. In a violation of well-established international law, Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions was involved in using vector groups to illegally access WhatsApp and sending a malicious PDF file to target WhatsApp users, which resulted in Israeli intelligence agencies maliciously disrupting journalists’ content through the app. A WhatsApp spokesperson claimed that the company had successfully eliminated this illegal exploitation vector.

Paragon’s hacking software is used by Israeli government clients, and WhatsApp claimed it could not identify the clients that ordered the attacks on the WhatsApp accounts of more than 100 journalists and civil society activists who spoke out against Israeli atrocities in Gaza. However, WhatsApp has not provided information about further steps for further investigation. Experts say the targeting was a zero-click attack, meaning the targets would not have to click on any malicious links to be affected. WhatsApp did not say where the journalists and civil society members were based, although the meta company said most of them were from European countries. WhatsApp sent a letter to Gone Solutions to cease the covert war after repeated attempts at attacks. A company spokesperson said that the victims had been notified via WhatsApp chat.

These attackers look for vulnerabilities in apps or mobile phone operating systems or try to trick users into clicking on malicious links or downloading malware, all of which can lead to illegal access to the user and stealing their content and adding fake content to it, as well as jeopardizing privacy and security and damaging the user’s phone. Wired magazine reported in October 2023 that it had signed a $2 million contract with the Homeland Security Investigations Division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. John Scott Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, told NBC News that such a spy hack has the potential to turn the telephone in your pocket into a spying device.

Scott Railton said that when a phone is infected, the operator of this spyware can usually do anything that you as a user have the right to do on the phone. This Israeli company’s spyware has the ability to steal emails from your phone, as well as automatically prepare and send a damaging reply to this email, can also film the user’s voice and open the camera, and can also create and send baseless messages to focus the attention of security agencies on the user. They can access your private messages, your business chats, see your photos, browse your messages, listen to your voice memos, see your notes, read your contacts, get your passwords, and do some things like silently turn on the microphone or turn on the camera to listen to the conversation in the room. It should be noted that WhatsApp sued the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group in 2019. What, the Israeli firm was accused of helping the usurping Israeli government’s spy agencies hack the phones of more than a thousand users, including journalists, diplomats, high-ranking government officials, and political dissidents.

Israel’s increasing attacks on individual privacy highlight a number of concerns for the human community entering the new world of high-tech, especially the use of spyware by private companies for government or corporate espionage. WhatsApp, which is used globally for secure messaging, is actively working to prevent such attacks. It is interesting how these types of surveillance and espionage tactics are increasingly being linked to Israeli firms, given that the NSO Group is being investigated for similar activities, along with this new case of Paragon Solutions, which shows how widespread this problem is becoming. If this issue is not raised urgently at the international level to find a solution to this problem that is linked to the natural freedoms enjoyed by humans, then today Israel is condemning individual privacy in this field, tomorrow this game will be capable of causing dangerous harm to humanity.