According to the chat service, an Israeli company called Paragon Solutions used group chats and PDFs to target the individuals.

WhatsApp told TechCrunch that it believed the hacking campaign happened in December, and that it sent a cease and desist letter to Paragon. Idan Nurick, the CEO of Paragon, did not respond to a request for comment sent via LinkedIn. AE Industrial did not respond to a request for comment.

WhatsApp says it disrupted a spyware campaign last month that targeted journalists and civil society members, according to reports from The Guardian and Reuters. The campaign originated from an Israeli spyware company called Paragon Solutions and impacted around 90 users.

An official with Meta's popular WhatsApp chat service said the Israeli spyware company Paragon targeted scores of its users, including journalists and members of civil society. The official said Friday that WhatsApp had sent Paragon a cease-and-desist letter following the hacking.

Meta Platforms Inc.’s WhatsApp messenger service said it disrupted a hacking campaign linked to Israeli spyware firm Paragon.

WASHINGTON >> An official with Meta Platforms’ popular WhatsApp chat service said Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions had targeted scores of its users, including journalists and members of civil society.

WhatsApp says that civil society workers and journalists on its platform were the targets of hacks by the Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions. A company official told Gizmodo that WhatsApp had detected the hacking attempts in December and closed down the attack vector.