A new Italian citizen was targeted with Paragon’s Graphite spyware. We have a serious problem

A new Italian citizen was targeted with Paragon’s Graphite spyware, in what the article describes as the fifth Italian in an ongoing government surveillance activity. The individual named Francesco Nicodemo, an Italian political adviser, said he was infected with Graphite, and later found it while in Vienna after he ignored a suspicious WhatsApp message. Nicodemo discovered he had been infected, and the piece notes Graphite is an invasive, non-auditable spyware that covertly accesses sensitive phone data.

Nicodemo is among 90 victims notified by WhatsApp about evidence linking their devices to Paragon spyware, according to Citizenlab’s senior forensic researcher John Scott-Railton. The article also states that Italy’s government admitted using Paragon spyware to surveil some known victims, but denied spying on two Fanpage journalists exposed in June 2024, with the piece listing other named victims as confirmation of surveillance.