Several opposition leaders on Tuesday said they received an alert from Apple warning them of “state-sponsored attackers trying to remotely compromise” their iPhones and alleged the government of snooping, a claim rejected by IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who assured a thorough probe into the matter.
Those who received such notifications included Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, party leaders Shashi Tharoor, Pawan Khera, KC Venugopal, Supriya Shrinate, TS Singhdeo and Bhupinder Singh Hooda; Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Raghav Chadha, AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi and some aides of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi also received the message from Apple.
As the controversy gathered momentum, Apple, in a statement, said that it “did not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker”. It further added that “the notifications may be false alarms”.
The government, while asserting that it was concerned and had ordered a probe into the incident, added that Apple had issued an advisory in nearly 150 countries and the alerts were “vague” in nature.
