"Cyberweapon manufacturers plot to stay on the right side of US", 31 May 2023

In the summer of 2019, as Paragon Solutions was building one the world’s most potent cyberweapons, the company made a prescient decision: before courting a single customer, best get the Americans on side. The Israeli start-up had watched local rival NSO Group, makers of the controversial Pegasus spyware, fall foul of the Biden administration and be blacklisted in the US. So Paragon sought guidance from top American advisers, secured funding from US venture capital groups and eventually scored a marquee client that eludes its competition: the US government...

...The malware surreptitiously pierces the protections of modern smartphones and evades the encryption of messaging apps like Signal or WhatsApp, sometimes harvesting the data from cloud backups — much like Pegasus does. Paragon was set up by Ehud Schneorson, the retired commander of Unit 8200, the Israeli army’s elite signals intelligence arm. According to people familiar with the company, which includes ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak on its board, has secured investment from two US-based venture capital firms, Battery Ventures and Red Dot.

Paragon, Barak, Battery Ventures and Red Dot declined to comment...

...President Joe Biden signed an executive order in March barring any US agency from purchasing spyware that “poses risks to national security or has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses around the world.” The wording of the executive order is seen by experts as targeting NSO, while carving out a space for companies like Paragon to continue selling similar spyware, but only to the closest of US allies...