Trump administration reinstates contract with Israeli-founded spyware maker Paragon

The Trump administration has reactivated a $2 million contract with Israeli-founded Paragon Solutions, a maker of spyware that can be used to hack into mobile phones, including encrypted-messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.

The action comes after the US Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in September 2024 awarded Paragon with the contract under the administration of then-US president Joe Biden.

Shortly after, the contract was put under a “stop work order” and placed under review to verify whether it was in compliance with a Biden administration executive order restricting the government’s use of commercial spyware that could violate human rights, according to a report in WIRED.

The stop work order was recently lifted, according to an update on the US government’s Federal Procurement Data System, dated August 30.

According to the public procurement documents, the contract is for a “fully configured proprietary solution, including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance and training.”

Paragon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Paragon, backed by former prime minister Ehud Barak, is a rival of Israeli cyber-hacking firm NSO Group, the maker of the controversial Pegasus software. At the end of last year, the Tel Aviv-based firm was reportedly sold to US private equity firm AE Industrial Partners.

Among its clients are the US government and law enforcement agencies in Europe and Israel. Earlier this year, the spyware maker came under scrutiny by Meta’s popular WhatsApp chat service for allegedly targeting scores of its users, including journalists and members of civil society. The messaging app service said it had detected an effort to hack approximately 90 users of its platform.

In June, Paragon ended contracts with Italy following allegations that the Italian government used the company’s technology to hack the phones of critics, including journalists.

Paragon was founded in 2019 by former IDF elite intelligence unit 8200 commander Ehud Schneorson, CEO Idan Nurick, CTO Igor Bogudlov and Chief Research Officer Liad Abraham. Among its main investors were US-based venture capital firm Battery Ventures and Israeli venture capital fund Red Dot.

Paragon describes itself as a startup that provides its clients with “ethically based tools to disrupt intractable threats, cyber and forensic capabilities to locate and analyze digital data, cyber workforce training, and critical infrastructure analysis and threat mitigation.”

The offensive cyber startup is the developer of software known as Graphite, a regulated spyware tool that allows users, including government bodies, to access, collect, and extract data backed up from an individual’s smartphone to the cloud. The software is also capable of extracting data from encrypted-messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.

The contracts that Paragon scored in recent years came at a time of US government actions under the Biden administration to scrutinize the improper use of commercial spyware. The US government blacklisted Israel’s NSO Group in November 2021, adding it to the list of foreign companies that engage in malicious cyber activities.