Apple alert: India opposition says government tried to hack phones

Some Indian opposition leaders have accused the government of trying to hack into their phones after receiving warning messages from Apple.

An alert from Apple indicated that the recipient was suspected of being targeted by state-sponsored attackers. The company, however, did not specify the identity of these attackers.

Government officials, in response, dismissed these allegations, labeling them as "destructive politics." Nonetheless, they asserted a commitment to investigating the matter thoroughly to uncover the truth behind these notifications.

Around a dozen opposition politicians, including Shashi Tharoor, KC Venugopal from the Congress party, Mahua Moitra from the Trinamool Congress, and Priyanka Chaturvedi from the Shiv Sena UBT, confirmed receiving this message from Apple. Additionally, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi mentioned that several individuals working in his office received the alert. He emphasized their lack of fear, stating, "You can tap my phone as much as you want, but I'm not concerned. I'll willingly hand over my phone."

Several journalists, such as Siddharth Varadarajan from The Wire, also reported receiving the message.

Addressing the situation, Federal Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, through a post on social media, invited Apple to participate in the government's investigation, seeking accurate information regarding the alleged state-sponsored attacks.

Apple's support page for users notes that state-sponsored attackers are well-funded and sophisticated, targeting specific individuals and their devices. However, it refrains from providing specific details about the notifications to prevent these attackers from adjusting their behavior to evade detection in the future.

The BBC's queries to Apple regarding the matter remain unanswered.

According to technology analyst Prasanto K Roy, companies like Apple analyze activity patterns to identify large-scale coordinated malware attacks, potentially attributing them to specific countries or known state-sponsored agencies. Nevertheless, Apple tends to avoid attributing such attacks to any specific actor.

In India, politicians and journalists shared screenshots of the alerts received from Apple, prompting observations that no member of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had confirmed receiving such notifications. BJP Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar later acknowledged that his colleague Piyush Goyal had received the alert.

Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha, who also received the alert, linked it to the upcoming general election, viewing it within the context of attacks on the opposition, which he described as facing relentless repression by investigatory agencies, politically motivated criminal cases, and incarceration.

The BJP leaders dismissed accusations of government involvement as baseless, suggesting that it was Apple's responsibility to clarify the meaning behind the notifications. They claimed that the opposition was creating false allegations due to their lack of genuine issues against the government.

Priyanka Chaturvedi addressed a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging an investigation into those within the state attempting to access her phone. Several opposition leaders in India had previously accused Mr. Modi's government of placing them under surveillance.

Previously, in 2019, WhatsApp had disclosed in a lawsuit that Indian journalists and activists were among those targeted by Pegasus, a surveillance software developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, which claimed to work only with government agencies.

In 2021, The Wire reported that over 300 numbers in a leaked database of thousands of phone numbers, listed by government clients of NSO, belonged to Indians.

Additionally, a political controversy arose when The New York Times reported that India had obtained Pegasus from Israel as part of a defense deal in 2017. However, Mr. Modi's government denied purchasing the spyware, which can infiltrate smartphones without users' knowledge and access almost all their data.