cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/63197390
found this on some telegram channel:
In February 2026, an employee of Paragon Solutions published a photograph on her LinkedIn profile depicting the operation of the Graphite spyware. The post has currently been deleted.
Reut Yamen holds the position of Chief Legal Counsel and Director of Compliance at the Israeli company Paragon Solutions, which specializes in cyber-surveillance technologies. The company was founded in 2019 by a group of former employees of Israeli intelligence services — among them Ehud Schneorson, former commander of Unit 8200 (Israel's equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency), as well as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
The post was first noticed by technology researcher Yurre van Bergen, who tracks the use and proliferation of spyware worldwide.
The image apparently shows a demonstration interface of the Graphite system. An operator can view messages intercepted from a surveillance target in various services, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Line, and TikTok.
According to the results of a large-scale investigation conducted by The Citizen Lab in 2025, in 2024 in Italy, dozens of journalists and private individuals were attacked via the WhatsApp messenger using Graphite. A "zero-click" exploit (one that does not require user interaction) was used for this purpose.
Paragon Solutions has (or previously had) contracts with U.S. government agencies, in particular the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
can't have a secure messenger if the device itself isn't secure
This attack is one of the ones stopped by iOS’ lockdown mode.
android as well. though that's not how people use their phones.
No, I believe this specific attack is one that used iMessage link previews as another user posted about in this thread. That behavior is stopped by iOS lockdown mode.
Android lockdown mode functions much differently and doesn’t turn off as much stuff internally. It wouldn’t have stopped the recent sms of death attack, for example.
i don't see anything to suggest this is an sms attack
Well the picture identifies the user by their number and graphite has made the news with zero click sms attacks before so it, uh, stands to reason.
But I’m coming around on it not being the 2025 iOS zero click just because the picture shows a date in February of 2026 and Apple caught and patched 43200 in February of 2025. It could still be an unpatched device from a year later though, but why wouldn’t they show iMessage as opposed to everything else? It seems like they’d filter the source of messages even if they were just reading the output of the messages app that reads iMessage, rcs and sms…
I initially believed the other user who said it was 43200 because paragon does that stuff and the journalist hack was in the news at that time but I misread the date on the picture. I’m not even thinking it’s necessarily an iOS device.
Hell, it could be a trade show or a demo.
Which is why I run GrapheneOS.
I'm glad you said this because I was thinking, "Wait a second, isn't Graphite that OS that runs on Pixels? Is nothing sacred?" But no. That's Graphene, an important distinction. Cynical subroutine aborted.
Nothing to see here. Beep boop.
That's only one half, the person you're talking to might not be running a secure device
If you're an org who's serious you will of course control the hardware platform, too.
can't have a secure OS if the device itself isn't secure
These are reasonable demands https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
They are reasonable for what is available, doesn’t make it secure when the device can still do anything.
I don't understand what you're trying to say.
That you need all three: hardware, os, software to be open source to consider it private and secure.
Sure, but that's maximalist demand. Nobody is going to offer RISCV open hardware in mobile space, especially the baseband. With GOS I can at least be reasonably sure that the cellular radio is really off when I tell it to.
With WiFi tablets the chances are better.
Oh good lord, I thought Graphebe was actually what they were TALKING about for a minute, I was EXTREMELY taken aback.