Apple Says Detecting Attacks Relies on Threat Intelligence Signals, Not on State-Sponsored Actors

After a major controversy erupted between the ruling party and the opposition leaders over the alleged hacking of their phones, Apple officially announced that it does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.

"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. It's possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected," Apple said in a statement.

The tech giant further said that they are unable to provide information about what causes them to issue threat notifications, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh took to X on the clarification from Apple and said "Apple's clarification is a long-winded non-denial... it only confirms what Rahul Gandhi said in his press conference today."
Multiple political leaders have alleged that their Apple devices have been the victim of alleged hacking. The leaders shared the screenshot of the warning received on their Apple devices.

The leaders alleged that the Government was behind this attempt to breach their devices.

Leaders like — TMC MP Mahua Moitra, Congress' Pawan Khera, Shashi Tharoor, Rahul Gandhi, and AAP MP Raghav Chaddha were among others who claimed that their phones were hacked.

The opposition party's allegations bring the BJP on the front foot where multiple leaders slammed the opposition leaders.

BJP IT cell head, Amit Malviya told ANI "Apple has clarified that they have sent several such notifications across the world. Approximately users in 150 counties have received such notifications and they are also not able to point out why such notifications have been triggered. So, for the opposition to allege that this is being done at the behest of the government is absolutely baseless.

Rahul Gandhi apparently under the influence of foreign-funded agencies keeps raking these issues but has never cooperated with the investigation. The Opposition does not have any issue to take on the Government and therefore they are resorting to making these false allegations."

Earlier Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that many people in his party had got similar notifications and claimed that he was not scared of phone-tapping.

"Very few people are fighting against this but we are not scared. You can do as much (phone) tapping as you want, I don't care. If you want to take my phone, I will give it to you" Rahul Gandhi said.