Paragon, responding to the committee’s findings, accused Italian authorities of refusing to conduct a thorough technical verification—an assessment it argued could have resolved the issue.
Apart from focusing on investment, the Atlantic Council notes that the global spyware market is “growing and evolving,” with its dataset expanded to include four new vendors, seven new resellers or brokers, 10 new suppliers, and 55 new individuals linked to the industry.
Newly identified vendors include Israel’s Bindecy and Italy’s SIO. Among the resellers are front companies connected to NSO products, such as Panama’s KBH and Mexico’s Comercializadora de Soluciones Integrales Mecale, as highlighted by the Mexican government. New suppliers named include the UK’s Coretech Security and UAE’s ZeroZenX.
The report highlights the central role that these resellers and brokers play, stating that it is “a notably under-researched set of actors.” According to the report, “These entities act as intermediaries, obscuring the connections between vendors, suppliers, and buyers. Oftentimes, intermediaries connect vendors to new regional markets.”
“This creates an expanded and opaque spyware supply chain, which makes corporate structures, jurisdictional arbitrage, and ultimately accountability measures a challenge to disentangle,” Sarah Graham, who coauthored the report, tells WIRED.
“Despite this, resellers and brokers are not a current feature of policy responses,” she says.
The study reveals the addition of three new countries linked to spyware activity—Japan, Malaysia, and Panama. Japan in particular is a signatory to international efforts to curb spyware abuse, including the Joint Statement on Efforts to Counter the Proliferation and Misuse of Commercial Spyware and the Pall Mall Process Code of Practice for States.
“The discovery of entities operating in new jurisdictions, like Japan, highlights potential conflicts of interest between international commitments and market dynamics,” Graham says.
Despite efforts by the Biden administration to constrain the spyware market through its executive order, trade and visa restrictions, and sanctions, the industry has continued to operate largely without restraint.
