Profile of Israeli surveillance startup Paragon, funded with $5-10M from US-based Battery, which sources say allows police to hack encrypted messaging apps
Thomas Brewster / Forbes : Tweets: @jsrailton , @imdrinknwyn , @matthewmspace , @marwasf , @ncweaver , @imdrinknwyn , @jsrailton , @tenacioustek , @imdrinknwyn , @jsrailton , @nixxin , @chey_cobb , @iblametom , and @zackwhittaker Tweets: John Scott-Railton / @jsrailton : NEW: American-funded mercenary hacking company Paragon targets @signalapp & @WhatsApp etc.. by infecting devices. Trying to sell to US police. This will end badly. Paragon & funders @BatteryVentures need urgent scrutiny. By @iblametom https://www.forbes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @imdrinknwyn : @iblametom @DemopJ Adam Boehler is of course Jared's old college roommate, who accompanied him on his World Pillage-grimages. https://twitter.com/... Matthew Miller / @matthewmspace : Israeli tech companies are weird. They either make things to secure technology (Authentec later created Touch/Face ID for Apple after buyout) or absolutely break it (Pegasus hacks everything). https://twitter.com/... @marwasf : Breaking: Yet another new secretive Israeli surveillance company comes into the light, Paragon. And guess where do its co-founders come from? Yes, Israeli intelligence, and Ehud Barak sets on its board. https://www.forbes.com/... Nicholas Weaver / @ncweaver : @jsrailton @BatteryVentures @WhatsApp @Microsoft @Google @Cisco Note that if you REQUIRE a PR/TT to whatsapp first, WhatsApp will shut down the hack when they catch you, but probably won't sue you or notify your targets. @imdrinknwyn : @iblametom @DemopJ Before being appointed by Trump to manage a COVID slush fund. https://twitter.com/... John Scott-Railton / @jsrailton : Even if the tech works.. I'd love to see how Paragon investors @BatteryVentures think about litigation risk. #NSOGroup targeted @WhatsApp users. WhatsApp found them, shut the hack down, and then sued the company. @Microsoft @Google @Cisco & others have all joined that lawsuit. Etienne / @tenacioustek : The problem is bigger than NSO, this whole industry is broken. How long until we find Parangon spyware on a journalist phone? https://twitter.com/... @imdrinknwyn : @iblametom @DemopJ Interesting. Looking into Battery Ventures. So Adam Boehler, was a senior investor for Francisco Partners, one time owner and investor in NSO Group.... https://twitter.com/... John Scott-Railton / @jsrailton : Big picture: current big tech playbook for private sector offensive actors: - find them - shut their tech down - call them out - use the legal system if necessary Investing in a mercenary operation to hack these companies from within US jurisdiction seems... reckless. Nikhil Pahwa / @nixxin : This is only going to increase, because there's 💵in it. We need a moratorium on the deployment of such cyberweapons, but as long as people are buying & people are funding, this won't stop. We need greater restrictions on funding, buying too. And disarmament. https://twitter.com/... CyberSec Chey / @chey_cobb : Paragon's co-founder, director, and chief shareholder is Ehud Schneorson, the former commander of Israel's NSA equivalent, known as Unit 8200. The other co-founders are ex-Israeli intelligence and former PM Ehud Barak is on the Board. https://www.forbes.com/... Thomas Brewster / @iblametom : Founded in 2019, it's still in stealth, doesn't even have a website. It has a remarkable set of founders too, including: - Ehud Schneorson, the former commander of Israel's NSA equivalent, Unit 8200. - Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. https://twitter.com/... Zack Whittaker / @zackwhittaker : “With an American backer [Battery Ventures] it appears Paragon is going to try and crack American law enforcement agencies where others like NSO have failed.” https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
In 2021, Forbes revealed that Paragon — an Israeli hacking firm led by former [[a:840532|Unit 8200 commander Ehud Schneorson, part of a wave of spyware vendors the US was learning to favor over pariah firms like NSO]] — had raised $5–10M from Silicon Valley's Battery Ventures to build tools that infect phones to break into Signal and WhatsApp, with former PM Ehud Barak on its board. Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton publicly warned that selling device infection to American police "will end badly" and called for scrutiny of the funders.
The intervening years largely validated that warning: Citizen Lab later documented suspected deployments of Paragon's Graphite spyware in Australia, Canada and Israel, WhatsApp disrupted a Paragon campaign targeting 90 journalists and civil-society members, and Apple patched the February zero-day used to hack European journalists' iPhones — making this early funding round the seed of a now-documented surveillance operation.
First-order effects
- Battery Ventures' $5–10M gives Paragon the capital to mature device-infection capability against end-to-end encrypted apps and pursue US police departments as customers, putting American municipal buyers one procurement away from mercenary-grade phone hacking.
- The disclosure immediately drags Battery Ventures into the NSO-adjacent reputational territory occupied by Francisco Partners, whose portfolio firm NSO Group pursued authoritarian-regime deals, forcing the funders to answer for what their capital builds.
Second-order effects
- Encrypted-messaging platforms are forced into permanent counter-spyware operations — a burden WhatsApp ultimately absorbed when it detected and disrupted Paragon's campaign against journalists — raising the security cost baseline for every app promising private communications.
- By backing a "clean," allied vendor rather than a sanctioned one, US investors and officials help bifurcate the spyware market, steering demand away from pariah firms and toward Western-compatible suppliers whose deployments face lighter political resistance.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the industry structurally splits into a two-tier spyware economy: US-allied firms gain mainstream capital, board-level political cover and government customers, while export controls and sanctions discipline only the outliers — with democratic oversight of police hacking lagging the technology's spread.
- Zero-click infections of flagship consumer devices become a normalized instrument of domestic law enforcement and intelligence, eroding the practical privacy guarantee of end-to-end encryption regardless of how well the crypto itself holds up.
The trend: American venture capital and US market-shaping are legitimizing a new generation of allied spyware vendors, shifting commercial phone hacking from sanctioned outlaws to state-compatible suppliers.