BY THE EDITOR
Elections to five state assemblies are lined up for November and these are being described as “semi-final” for the Lok Sabha elections expected to be held early in 2024. The run-up to the Assembly elections has witnessed some highly-charged electioneering with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself taking on the mantle of star campaigner for the BJP; top leaders of the nascent INDIA grouping have also not been found wanting and have been touring all the poll-bound states in their effort to prevent the BJP from making any significant gains ahead of the next year’s Lok Sabha polls. It is in such a charged atmosphere that reports have emerged of Apple alerting opposition leaders and even a few journalists about “state-sponsored attackers who are remotely trying to compromise” their iPhones. The notification says the attackers are likely targeting these individuals because of who they are or what they do.
As was to be expected, opposition leaders have immediately attacked the central government accusing it of spying on them thus reviving memories of the Pegasus saga. According to reports, so far, around a dozen opposition politicians have confirmed that they got the message from Apple. The list has MPs including Shashi Tharoor and KC Venugopal from the Congress party, Mahua Moitra from the Trinamool Congress and Priyanka Chaturvedi from the Shiv Sena UBT. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also said that several people who worked in his office got the alert. “We are not scared. You can do as much [phone] tapping as you want, I don’t care. If you want to take my phone, I will give it to you,” Gandhi said at a press conference. In the face of the opposition attack, the Centre has asked Apple to join its investigation “with real, accurate information on the alleged state sponsored attacks”.
In a note issued earlier, Apple had said “State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete. It’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected.” The company also said that it “does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.” In July 2021, a global collaborative investigative project reported that a spyware called Pegasus, developed by an Israeli cybersecurity company called NSO Group, may have been used to target mobile phones of individuals in several countries, including India. An Expert Committee appointed by the Supreme Court to look into the matter, however, did not find any conclusive evidence. However, the court had also noted that the Centre “has not cooperated” with the panel. It will be in the interest of all that the promised investigation begins early and goes to the bottom of the allegation to ascertain the truth.