Last month, several political leaders received alerts on their iPhones with the subject as ‘ALERT: State-sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone’
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Apple’s cyber security team finally held a meeting with India’s cyber security agency Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) regarding the recent notification alerts sent to some prominent iPhone users in India. Last month, Apple sent ‘state-sponsored attackers trying to remotely compromise’ alerts on the iPhones of some leaders in the opposition party. This notification raised concerns if the government is trying to hack their phones.
Right after the opposition party leaders made public posts about the alert, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) Rajeev Chandrasekhar stated that Apple will have to explain the reason behind sending these notifications to political leaders and a few media persons.
Notably, this meeting was scheduled to take place in the end of November itself. According to a report by PTI, the official revealed, “Apple team met CERT-In. Now CERT-In has to submit its report based on its findings.” He clarified that CERT-In is not given any timeline to submit this report. Hence, it will deliver once the investigation is complete.
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The subject of the said alert read ‘ALERT: State-sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone’. It then reads: “Apple believes that you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID. These attackers are likely targeting you individually because of who you are or what you do. If your device is compromised by a state-sponsored attacker, they may be able to remotely access your sensitive data, communications, or even the camera and microphone. While it’s possible this is a false alarm, please take this warning seriously.”
The Members of Parliament (MPs) who received the warning on their iPhones included Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, party leaders Shashi Tharoor, Pawan Khera, K C Venugopal, Supriya Shrinate, T S Singh Deo and Bhupinder S Hooda; Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.
As per Apple’s support page on the matter, the state-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete.
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Apple also added that it can be a possible loophole in the alert system, claiming that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected. Apple said, “We are unable to provide information about what causes us to issue threat notifications, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future.”
