Scandal on LinkedIn: Employee Reveals Secrets of Israeli Spy Company
In an unprecedented incident on social media platforms, LinkedIn was rocked by a photo mistakenly posted by a legal consultant at the Israeli company Paragon Solutions, which specializes in spyware, placing the company at the center of a digital storm and sparking widespread debate about the ethics of cyber espionage.
The photo, taken on February 10, 2026, showed behind the consultant and her colleague a control panel containing logs and interfaces that allow monitoring of encrypted applications like WhatsApp, using "zero-click" vulnerabilities, with a Czech number named "Valentina" appearing.
Despite the photo being quickly deleted, it spread widely online, according to cybersecurity researcher Jor van Bergen, who noted that the panel revealed the state of communications and tracked applications and accounts, posing a serious breach in the security of cyber operations.
* "Catastrophic Failure" in Cybersecurity
Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton described the incident as a "catastrophic failure in operational security," emphasizing the danger of leaking such data in a sensitive sector known for its strict operational confidentiality.
Despite the company's attempts to control the situation, the incident sparked a broad discussion about the ethics of using advanced surveillance tools like the Graphite program, which Paragon had faced previous accusations in early 2025 for exploiting zero-click vulnerabilities to target journalists and activists.
Reports indicate that Paragon's clients include governments in Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore. The U.S. government also confirmed the purchase of the Graphite program for operations by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE in January 2025.
The incident once again demonstrated the fragility of digital security even in the most secretive and advanced companies, reopening the debate about the limits of using modern espionage techniques and whether some governments and companies are crossing ethical lines in this field.
