Headquartered in Israel; co-founded by former state officials.
Paragon sells 'Graphite,' zero-click spyware that infects smartphones through apps like WhatsApp with no user interaction, extracting messages and data covertly. Co-founded by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, it was sold to governments including US agencies; Citizen Lab documented Graphite being used against journalists.
Citizen Lab documented Paragon's Graphite zero-click spyware infecting the phones of journalists and civil-society targets — the same mercenary-spyware abuse Paragon marketed itself as being above.