A row has broken out in India after several opposition leaders and journalists received a warning from Apple about “state-sponsored attackers” targeting their phone.
The alert did not specify who the attackers could be. The leaders, including some MPs, have accused the federal government of trying to hack into their devices.
A minister dismissed the allegations, terming them “destructive politics”. But he added that the government will “investigate to get to the bottom of these notifications”.
So far, around a dozen opposition politicians have confirmed that they got the message from Apple. The list has MPs including Shashi Tharoor and KC Venugopal from the Congress party, Mahua Moitra from the Trinamool Congress and Priyanka Chaturvedi from the Shiv Sena UBT.
Federal information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw posted on X (formerly Twitter) that information given by Apple about such notifications “seems vague and non-specific in nature”,
“We have also asked Apple to join the investigation with real, accurate information on the alleged state sponsored attacks,” he said.
On its support page for users, Apple says that “state-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time”, adding that these attacks target a “very small number of specific individuals and their devices”.
It also says that it can't give more details about what prompts it to issue these threat notifications as “that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future”. An Apple spokesperson told the BBC it had sent such notifications to people whose accounts are in nearly 150 countries, without specifying a time period.
On Tuesday, Indian politicians and journalists shared screenshots on X of the message they received from Apple#, with some pointing out that no member of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had confirmed receiving the notification yet.
“Funny that only opposition got the memo of surveillance, even the algorithm was selective in its choice!” Ms Chaturvedi wrote on X.
At a press conference, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said several people who worked in his office got the alert. Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha, who says he also received the alert, pointed to it coming just months before the general election.
“It must also be placed within the broader attacks on the opposition who are facing relentless repression by investigatory agencies, politically motivated criminal cases and incarceration,” he said. But BJP leaders said allegations of the government's involvement were “baseless” and that it was up to Apple to clarify what it meant by the notification.
“The opposition does not have any issue to take on the government and, therefore, they are resorting to making these false allegations,” said Amit Malviya, who looks after the BJP's IT department.
Ms Chaturvedi released a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to investigate “who, within the ‘state', is engaged in attempting to access my phone”. Several opposition leaders in India have earlier accused Mr Modi's government of placing them under surveillance.
In 2019, WhatsApp said in a lawsuit that Indian journalists and activists were among those targeted by Pegasus, a surveillance software made by Israeli firm NSO Group. NSO has said that it only works with government agencies.
In 2021, Indian website The Wire reported that more than 300 numbers on a leaked database of thousands of phone numbers – listed by government clients of NSO – belonged to Indians.
And last year, a political storm broke out after the New York Times reported that India had acquired Pegasus from Israel as part of a defence deal in 2017. Mr Modi's government has denied purchasing the spyware, which can infect smartphones without users' knowledge and access virtually all their data.
— CutC by bbc.com
