A zero-click has been used does not require any interaction from the victim, it is very simple therefore to be infected and not to notice that there is a spyware on the device. They are sophisticated attacks, often targeted and used during espionage operations. Among the targets there is also the director of Fanpage.it.
You don’t have to click any file, document or link. The SPYWARE Paragon enter the device silently, without anyone noticing it. He infected about 90 devices all over the world, among the targets also Francesco Cancellato, director of Fanpage.it, to confirm the message sent by Meta through the WhatsApp Support accounts. Paragon is a surveillance software high -end that works similarly to Pegasus by nso group. Once the spyware has infected the device has total access, it can also read encrypted chats on platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal.
Not only that. As he explained John Scott Railtonsenior researcher at the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto, which monitors and identifies digital threats against civil society, “the infection took place without any interaction. No connection to be clicked or attached to be opened. This is called zero-click attack.” He then added in an X post: “Whatsapp said that the objectives included journalists and members of civil society. They dismantled the attack carrier and they warned users. “
How zero click attacks work
Zero-Click attacks do not require any interaction from the victim, it is very simple therefore to be infected and do not notice that there is a spyware on the device. They are sophisticated attacks, often targeted and used during the Spying operations. “Zero-Click attacks” and “Exploit Zero-Click” are used interchangeable. Sometimes they are also called attacks without interaction or completely remote.
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These spyware exploit the defects of the devicefor example a flaw in verifying data, to be able to infect the system. Hackers can exploit these vulnerabilities to perform cyber attacks that do not foresee ainteraction by the victim.
The director of Fanpage.it also spied on
As Meta explained, the attack hit almost 100 people all over the world, also journalistsamong these canceled. The WhatsApp Support verified account sent to the journalist a message to notify him of the attack: “In December Whatsapp interrupted the activities of a spyware company that we believe has attacked your device. Our investigations indicate that you may have received a harmful file via WhatsApp and that it spyware it may have led to access to your dataincluding messages saved in the device “.
The devices were infected with a paragon solutions spyware, an Israeli manufacturer of hacking software, it is not clear who is behind the attack. The company immediately specified to want to sell its technology only to the governments of the democratic countries, with the aim of Hit dangerous criminals. Meta and Citizen Lab are now investigating to reconstruct the attack. Coem explained Cencellato: “The technical analyzes on the device needed to evaluate the actual scope of this attack have begun, what has actually been taken or spied on the phone and for how long. Obviously it is our interest to know, if it will be possible to do it, who ordered this espionage activity “.
