Opposition leaders claim they received alerts from Apple about 'state-sponsored attacks' on their phones

Apple India has sent a warning notification to several iPhone users apprising them that they could be the likely target of a state-sponsored attack trying to “remotely compromise” the device associated with their mail id.

Most of these users are leaders of political parties of the opposition, and include Trinamool Congress Party firebrand Mohua Moitra, the Shiv Sena's Priyanka Chaturvedi, Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, and the Congress party’s Pawan Khera. Some journalists also put out posts on X (formerly Twitter) that Apple had sent them notifications warning them of a probable attack attempt on their device.

Users targeted by such attacks are “individually targeted because of who they are or what they do”, said the alert message Apple sent to the affected users. The company could not be immediately reached for comment.


“Unlike traditional cybercriminals, state-sponsored attackers apply exceptional resources to target a very small number of specific individuals and their devices, which makes these attacks much harder to detect and prevent,” says a blogpost from Apple, explaining how such attacks work.

This is the second time Apple has sent out notifications warning users of a possible state-sponsored attack on them.

In 2021, both Apple and Google had sent out warning notifications to users globally, including in India, cautioning them that their devices may have been remotely compromised due to an attack by Pegasus, a spyware manufactured by Israeli company NSO.

The Central government later formed an expert panel to look into these allegations, but it concluded that there was no evidence of the spyware being state sponsored.