Apple has issued warnings to more than half a dozen Indian lawmakers, including Rahul Gandhi, the Indian opposition leader, about potential state-sponsored attacks targeting their iPhones.
The shocking revelation comes just months before the upcoming general elections in India.
Apple Warnings Ripple Across Indian Politics
Prominent figures from various political parties in India, such as Shashi Tharoor, Akhilesh Yadav, Mahua Moitra, and Priyanka Chaturvedi, have reported receiving these security alerts from Apple.
According to TechCrunch, some of the politicians who received warnings sent by Apple are Asaduddin Owaisi, Raghav Chadha, Sitaram Yechury, and Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera. Even journalists Siddharth Varadarajan and Sriram Karri, along with Samir Saran, the President of Observer Research Foundation (ORF) India.
Apple's Response to the Threat Notifications
The Cupertino giant has acknowledged sending threat notifications to these individuals, but the company has not directly attributed these alerts to any specific state-sponsored attacker.
Wonder who? Shame on you.
— Priyanka Chaturvedi🇮🇳 (@priyankac19) October 30, 2023
Cc: @HMOIndia for your kind attention pic.twitter.com/COUJyisRDk
In a statement, Apple emphasized the complexity of detecting such attacks and mentioned that some notifications might be false alarms or certain attacks may go undetected.
India's IT Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, expressed concern over the matter and confirmed that the government is investigating it. However, he downplayed the allegations, describing the threat notifications as "vague" and mere "estimations."
For a couple of years now, several of us lead our lives with this kind of #illegal prying into our lives, invasion of #privacy. Sadly, it is #state #sponsored and incessant. pic.twitter.com/wHy6pt62e9
— Sriram Karri (@oratorgreat) October 31, 2023
Pegasus Spyware Accusation
The Indian government has faced accusations of using the Pegasus spyware on activists and opposition leaders for several years.
While India has never officially acknowledged dealings with NSO, the Israeli developer of Pegasus, the malware has been discovered on the phones of journalists, academics, and political figures in the country, per 9to5Mac. However, there is no official confirmation linking the recent threat notifications to New Delhi.
Apple's Lockdown Mode
Privacy activists find the timing of these notifications concerning. Apple has previously advised users who receive such alerts to activate Lockdown mode, a security measure introduced in 2022.
This mode enhances security for individuals like journalists, politicians, attorneys, and human rights advocates, safeguarding them from state-sponsored spyware attacks. It restricts various functionalities, such as link previews, Safari features, and FaceTime calls from unfamiliar contacts.
"Public cynicism or judicial stupor should not preclude us from demanding an independent, transparent technical analysis and clear disclosures from the Government of India regarding its spyware purchases and deployments. This issue strikes at the heart of Indian democracy," Apar Gupta, a senior privacy activist, tweeted on X.
Since the introduction of threat notifications, Apple has issued alerts to individuals in nearly 150 countries.
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For those who regularly attend online meetings, this would further improve the understanding between people with different languages.
