Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Jitu Patwari alleged in a police complaint on Tuesday that his iPhone was targeted by spyware in a “state-sponsored attempt to misuse his data for political gains”, reported The Indian Express.
Patwari’s complaint, lodged with the police’s cyber cell in Bhopal, alleged that he received a threat notification from technology company Apple on July 9, followed by another on July 11 warning of an account recovery request for his Apple ID.
In the past week, at least three other persons associated with political parties have said that they received threat warnings from Apple.
The police are yet to register a first information report in the matter.
“You are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID,” one of the notifications sent to Patwari by Apple reads, according to his police complaint. “Today’s notification is being sent to targeted users in 98 countries, and to date we have notified users in over 150 countries.”
Patwari filed the police complaint three days after the Congress’ Alappuzha MP and party organisation in-charge KC Venugopal alleged that he had received a similar message from Apple about a “targeted mercenary spyware attack” on his iPhone.
On July 10, 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, also said they had received similar messages from Apple.
The technology company has sent similar notifications warning users of an attack several times since 2021.
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 Apple saying that “state-sponsored attackers” were trying to compromise their devices.
At least four journalists also got similar notifications from the firm.
However, in a subsequent clarification, the company said it did not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.
It also said mercenary spyware attacks such as those using Pegasus were “exceptionally rare and vastly more sophisticated than regular cybercriminal activity or consumer malware”.
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 governments around the world were using Pegasus to snoop on critics.
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