Apple on snooping row: Can't say it's state sponsored

iPhone-maker Apple Inc on Tuesday said it does not attribute threat notifications, such as the ones received by some MPs belonging to Opposition parties, to any specific state-sponsored attackers and that it cannot provide information on what causes such warnings.

After some of the most vocal critics of the government said they received warnings that attempts have been made by state-sponsored attackers to steal information from their iPhones, Apple in a statement stated it is possible that some threat notifications may be false alarms and some attacks may not be detected.

'Apple does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker,' the firm said.

State-sponsored attackers, it said, 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,' it said.

It, however, refused to say what triggered warnings received by MPs, such as Mahua Moitra of the Trinamool Congress.

'We are unable to provide information about what causes us to issue threat notifications, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future,' Apple said.

Meanwhile, sources privy to the development said Apple has sent threat notifications to individuals whose accounts are in nearly 150 countries.

Several opposition leaders on Tuesday claimed they had received an alert from Apple warning them of 'state-sponsored attackers trying to remotely compromise' their iPhones and posted purported screenshots of the message on their X handles.

Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, TMC's Mahua Moitra, Aam Aadmi Party's Raghav Chadha, Congress' Shashi Tharoor and his party's media and publicity department head Pawan Khera shared the message from Apple on X.

Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Sitaram Yechury also received a similar message, sources in the party said.