Congress’s KC Venugopal gets Apple warning about ‘mercenary spyware attack’

The Congress’s Alappuzha MP and party organisation in-charge KC Venugopal on Saturday said that he had received a message from technology company Apple about a “targeted mercenary spyware attack” on his iPhone.

This came three days after Iltija Mufti, the daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, and Pushparaj Deshpande, author and founder of socio-political organisation Samruddha Bharat Foundation, said they had received similar messages from Apple.

The technology company has sent out similar notifications warning users of an attack several times since 2021. In October, Apple had warned several Indian Opposition leaders and at least four journalists that it believed that their iPhones may have been targeted by “state-sponsored attackers”.

However, in a subsequent clarification, the company said that it did not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.

On Saturday, Venugopal posted on social media a screengrab of the email he received from Apple, which said that he was notified of a similar threat on October 30, 2023. It said this was not a repeat notice but that the company had detected another attack on his device.

The rest of the message was similar to the ones received by Iltija Mufti and Deshpande on Wednesday.

In all three notifications, Apple did not attribute the suspected attacks to any stakeholder.

It said, however, that they may be the targets “specifically because of who you are or what you do”.

The message said that mercenary spyware attacks such as those using Pegasus were “exceptionally rare and vastly more sophisticated than regular cybercriminal activity or consumer malware”.

“These attacks cost millions of dollars and are individually deployed against a very small number of people, but the targeting is ongoing and global,” it said.

The Pegasus spyware is licensed to governments around the world by the Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Group. The company insists that it sells its software only to “vetted governments” with good human rights records and that it is intended to target criminals.

However, in July 2021, a consortium of international media organisations reported that Pegasus was being used by governments around the world to snoop on critics.

In his social media post, Venugopal said that the Narendra Modi-led Central government was “acting in a criminal and unconstitutional manner, going after political opponents and invading their privacy in this manner”.

“We will oppose this blatantly unconstitutional act and breach on our privacy tooth and nail,” he said.

Earlier notifications

In October, Opposition leaders, including the Congress’ Shashi Tharoor, TS Singhdeo, Revanth Reddy, Pawan Khera and Supriya Shrinate, Aam Aadmi Party’s Raghav Chadha and Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav had received messages from the firm saying that “state-sponsored attackers” were trying to compromise their devices.

Besides the Opposition leaders, at least five journalists had also received the message.

In its alert, Apple had warned that “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”. The notification added: “While it’s possible this is a false alarm, please take this warning seriously.”