Eliana Willis

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETOver the past decade, spyware tools have been repeatedly found on the phones of journalists, activists, and politicians. This has raised concerns about the unprecedented proliferation of spyware technologies and the lack of protections within the tech sector.Also: Got a suspicious E-ZPass text? Don’t click the link (and what to do if you already did)Meta’s WhatsApp recently revealed it discovered a hacking campaign targeting about 90 users — mostly journalists and civil society members across two dozen countries. According to a WhatsApp spokesperson, the Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions — now acquired by Florida-based private equity firm AE Industrial Partners — was behind the attack.Graphite, Paragon’s spyware, was found to have infiltrated WhatsApp groups by simply sending users a malicious PDF attachment. Without users’ knowledge, it can access and read messages on encrypted applications like WhatsApp and Signal. What is a zero-click capability?What happened to WhatsApp was a zero-click attack, meaning targets don’t have to take any action for their devices to be compromised. In contrast, phishing or one-click attacks require user interaction with a malicious link or attachment. Once a phone is infected with a zero-click capability, the attacker can quietly gain complete access by exploiting a security vulnerability. In an interview with ZDNET, Rocky Cole, co-founder of mobile threat protection company iVerify, said that “in the case of graphite, via WhatsApp, some kind of payload, like a PDF or an image, [was sent to the victims’ devices] and the underlying processes that receive and handle those packages have vulnerabilities that the attackers exploit [to] infect the phone.” Also: 7 simple things I always do on Android to protect my privacy – and why you should tooWhile public reporting does not specify “whether graphite can engage in privilege escalation [vulnerability] and operate outside WhatsApp or even move into the iOS kernel itself, we do know from our own detections and other work with customers, that privilege escalation via WhatsApp in order to gain kernel access is indeed possible,” Cole said. iVerify has uncovered instances where “a number of WhatsApp crashes on [mobile] devices [they’re] monitoring with iVerify” have appeared to be malicious in nature, leading the iVerify team to believe that the malicious attacks are “potentially more widespread” than just the 90 people reported to have been infected by graphite. While the WhatsApp attack was predominantly launched against members of civil society, mobile spyware is an emerging threat against everyone because mobile exploitation is more widespread than one might think, Cole said. Moreover, “the result is an emerging ecosystem around mobile spyware development and an increasing number of VC-backed mobile spyware companies are ‘under pressure to become profitable enterprises,'” he said. This ultimately “creates marketing competition” for spyware merchants and “lowers barriers” that would deter these mobile exploitation attacks. Also: I clicked on four sneaky online scams on purpose – to show you how they workEarlier this year, WhatsApp won a lawsuit against NSO after a federal judge in California found that NSO was exploiting a security vulnerability within the messaging app to deliver Pegasus. The infamous NSO Group — known for infecting the phones of journalists, activists, and Palestinian rights organizations — has used similar zero-click capabilities through its Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, a commercial spyware and phone-hacking tool. Historically, the NSO Group has avoided selling to US-based clients and has also been banned by the US Commerce Department under former President Joe Biden’s administration for allegedly supplying spyware to authoritarian governments. However, “shifting political dynamics [under the Trump administration] raises the possibility that spyware may become more prevalent in the United States” — exacerbating mobile exploitation. Cole said the world is totally unprepared to deal with that. More