Prosecutors in Italy suspended the use of malware made by a company that was involved in an apparent attempt to infect targets with a fake version of WhatsApp.
On Wednesday, Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that the prosecutor’s office in Naples had ordered its employees to stop using surveillance technology made by SIO and Cy4gate, a company that was linked to a series of malicious phishing pages, one of which purported to be a WhatsApp download site, as Motherboard reported last week. Sources with knowledge of the suspension confirmed the news to Motherboard. The two sources, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive law enforcement matters, said the suspension was due to a serious malfunction in how the malware works. In some cases, when a law enforcement operator tasked the malware with exfiltrating data from a target’s phone, it would pop up a notification, which could tip off the target that they are under surveillance, according to the sources. The suspension, however, does not have anything to do with the WhatsApp phishing pages, the source said.
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