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“Worse Than Emergency”: Opposition Leaders Complain “State-Sponsored Attackers” Targeting iPhones

India Edited by Updated: Oct 31, 2023, 11:31 am
“Worse Than Emergency”: Opposition Leaders Complain “State-Sponsored Attackers” Targeting iPhones

After Mahua Moitra, Shashi Tharoor Complains Of ‘State-Sponsored Attackers’ Targeting His iPhone

After Mahua Moitra and Priyanka Chaturvedi shared screenshots of Apple”s warning message about “state-sponsored attackers” targeting their iPhones, senior Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor also claimed that he received a similar alert from Apple. The Congress leader, on his X handle, has shared screenshots of the text received from Apple.

“Received from an Apple ID, threat-notifications@apple.com, which I have verified. Authenticity confirmed. Glad to keep underemployed officials busy at the expenses of taxpayers like me! Nothing more important to do?” wrote Shashi Tharoor on X. Notably, the central government or any agencies have not yet responded to the allegations raised by the opposition leaders.

Several other opposition leaders also reportedly received similar alerts from Apple. This includes Congress leader and spokesperson Pawan Khera, Raghav Chadha of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), general secretary of the CPI(M) and former MP Sitaram Yechury and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav. Apart from politicians,  journalists Siddharth Vardarajan and Sriram Karri and Observer Researcher Foundation (ORF) president Samir Saran also received similar alerts on their devices.

Sharing the screenshot of the text received from Apple, Congress leader Pawan Khera criticised the Narendra Modi-led central government and wrote on X, ” Dear Modi Sarkar, why are you doing this?”. AAP leader Raghav Chadha also confirmed that he received the notification from Apple on Tuesday morning. Raghav Chadha stated that multiple voices of the opposition have been targeted. “As it is not about my phone or my data alone. Every Indian needs to be worried. Because today it is me, tomorrow it could be YOU,” the AAP leader posted on X.

Earlier, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi also severely slammed the central government on this issue. Priyanka Chaturvedi asked whether the Home Ministry would investigate the matter. Meanwhile, journalist Sriram Karri also posted on X that he had received the same warning from Apple. “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,” Sriram Karri wrote on X.

However, BJP completely rejected all the claims and described the allegations against the central government as “baseless and false”. The screenshot of the email by Apple, shared by Shashi Tharoor, clearly says that the “state-sponsored attackers” are very well funded and sophisticated and also added that their attacks are constantly evolving. The notification also urges the recipients to update their messaging and cloud applications to the latest version. According to the Apple support page, state-sponsored attackers apply exceptional resources to target a very small number of specific individuals and their devices, which makes these attacks much harder to detect and prevent. However, later, Apple stated that it does not attribute the threat notification to any specific state-sponsored attacker.

 

Topics
apple Apple Warning Congress mahua moitra opposition Shashi Tharoor Timeline Breaking

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