New Delhi: The Center has issued a notice to tech giant Apple concerning the threat notifications that various Members of Parliament (MPs) received, which read “state-sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone,” Information Technology (IT) Secretary S. Krishnan said on Thursday.
This development follows the Centre’s announcement that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the national agency responsible for addressing computer security incidents, has initiated an investigation into the Apple threat notification issue.
“CERT-In has started its probe in the Apple threat notification issue raised by opposition MPs, and a notice has been sent to the company,” stated IT Secretary S. Krishnan on Thursday during an event related to the IT Ministry.
The controversy began on October 31 when a number of politicians and academics shared screenshots of the notifications they received on their iPhones on social media site X, formerly Twitter.
Those who received these notifications included Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, party leaders Shashi Tharoor, Pawan Khera, K C Venugopal, Supriya Shrinate, T S Singhdeo, and Bhupinder S Hooda, as well as Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Later, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw refuted the hacking allegations made by the Center and expressed a commitment to conducting a comprehensive investigation. In a post on X, he stated, “In light of such information and widespread speculation, we have also asked Apple to join the investigation with real, accurate information on the alleged state-sponsored attacks.”
On the same day, Apple issued a statement acknowledging that they had sent threat notifications to individuals in nearly 150 countries since enabling the Threat Notifications feature.
The company clarified that it does not attribute these notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker, as such attackers are well-funded and sophisticated, and their methods continually evolve.
The detection of such attacks depends on imperfect and incomplete threat intelligence signals. Apple also noted that some threat notifications might be false alarms or that some attacks might go undetected due to these limitations.
Apple additionally pledged its support to the Center’s investigation.
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