India’s cybersecurity agency, CERT-In, has started investigating the complaints filed by opposition politicians regarding the iPhone warning alerts, says Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. As per a report by Indian Express, Vaishnaw revealed that CERT-In, which is based out of Delhi has started the probe. He also added that Apple has confirmed it has received the notice for investigation.
According to India Today, the IT Ministry has asked Apple representatives to reveal the details that led them to believe that the attack was 'state sponsored'. It has also asked Apple the basis of its conclusion that phones will be remotely accessed and that sensitive data will be leaked.
Vaishnaw and two more officials in the federal home ministry told Reuters that the scrutiny of security concerns raised by some politicians has begun.
Earlier this week, several high-profile Opposition politicians received a threat notification on their iPhones “State-Sponsored Attackers May be Targeting your iPhone”. This hinted that ‘state-sponsored attackers’ are trying to compromise iPhones associated with their IDs. Post this, several Opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of trying to hack into their phones.
Explaining the threat notifications, Apple shared a statement, “State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete.”
Apple said it did not attribute the threat notifications to "any specific state-sponsored attacker", adding that "it's possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected".
Politicians including Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, AAP's Raghav Chadha, Congress' Shashi Tharoor and his party's media and publicity department head Pawan Khera, and CPI(M) general Sitaram Yechury claimed to have received alerts from Apple about "state-sponsored attackers trying to remotely compromise" their iPhones.
Back in 2021, it was reported that the Indian government had used Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to spy on scores of journalists, activists and politicians, including Rahul Gandhi.
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