MOSCOW: Russia has accused United States (US) intelligence agencies of hacking thousands of iPhones belonging to Russian users and foreign diplomats.
According to AL Jazeera, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday it had discovered “intelligence activities” that had compromised the phones of Russians and diplomats from Syria, Israel, China and NATO members.
The FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB service, said Apple worked closely with United States agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA), but didn’t provide evidence for its claim.
Apple didn’t comment on whether iPhones in Russia had been hacked but denied working with authorities to compromise its devices.
The California-based tech giant said, “We’ve never worked with any government to insert the backdoor into any Apple product and never will.”
The NSA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab’s chief executive said dozens of senior workers had been victims of an “extremely complex, professional targeted cyberattack.”
In a blog post, Eugene Kaspersky said that the attack had been carried out using an invisible iMessage with a malicious attachment that exploited vulnerabilities in the iOS operating system.
“We are confident Kaspersky wasn’t the main target of this cyberattack. Kaspersky said the coming days would bring more clarity and further details on the worldwide proliferation of this spyware.”
Kaspersky, headquartered in Moscow but with offices in more than 30 countries, didn’t attribute the attack to a particular country or actor.
The alleged cyber-espionage campaign comes as ties between Russia and the United States are the most fraught in decades due to Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
