Congress’s KC Venugopal gets Apple warning about ‘mercenary spyware attack’

The Congress’s Alappuzha MP and party organisation in-charge KC Venugopal on Saturday said that he had received a message from technology company Apple about a “targeted mercenary spyware attack” on his iPhone.

This came three days after 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, said they had received similar messages from Apple.

The technology company has sent out similar notifications warning users of an attack several times since 2021. In October, Apple had warned several Indian Opposition leaders and at least four journalists that it believed that their iPhones may have been targeted by “state-sponsored attackers”.

However, in a subsequent clarification, the company said that it did not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.

On Saturday, Venugopal posted on social media a screengrab of the email he received from Apple, which said that he was notified of a similar threat on October 30, 2023. It said this was not a repeat notice but that the company had detected another attack on his device.

The rest of the message was similar to the ones received by Iltija Mufti and Deshpande on Wednesday.

In all three notifications, Apple did not attribute the suspected attacks to any stakeholder.

It said, however, that they may...

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