Russia says US intelligence has hacked thousands of iPhones

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By Webdesk


FSB accuses Apple of working closely with US intelligence agencies after the revelation of alleged ‘intelligence action’.

Russia has accused US intelligence agencies of hacking thousands of iPhones owned by Russian users and foreign diplomats in the country.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday it had discovered an “intelligence operation” that had compromised the phones of Russians and diplomats from Israel, Syria, China and NATO members.

The FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB spy agency, said Apple worked closely with U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA), but provided no evidence to support its claim.

In a statement, Apple did not comment on whether iPhones had been hacked in Russia, but denied collaborating with authorities to compromise its devices.

“We have never worked with any government to put a back door in an Apple product and never will,” the California-based tech giant said.

The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Separately, the CEO of the cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab said dozens of senior employees were victims of an “extremely complex, professionally targeted cyberattack”.

In a blog post, Eugene Kaspersky said the attack was carried out using an invisible iMessage with a malicious attachment that exploited vulnerabilities in the iOS operating system.

“We are convinced that Kaspersky was not the main target of this cyber attack. The coming days will bring more clarity and further details about the global spread of this spyware,” said Kaspersky.

Kaspersky, headquartered in Moscow but with offices in more than 30 countries, did not attribute the attack to any particular country or actor.

The alleged cyber-espionage campaign comes as relations between Russia and the US are at their most fraught in decades following Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Last month, the US Justice Department said it had disrupted a two-decade malware campaign by the FSB against targets in more than 50 countries.

In March, the Kremlin told officials involved in organizing Russia’s 2024 presidential election not to use iPhones over concerns that the devices could be vulnerable to infiltration by Western spy agencies, local media reported.



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