Russia has accused the US of hacking thousands of iphones in an espionage plot.
Russia spying on the US?
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it discovered an American spy operation that compromised thousands of iPhones using advanced surveillance software.
“The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action of the American special services using Apple mobile devices,” the FSB said in a statement.
Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab said dozens of its employees’ devices were compromised in the operation.
Apple devices infected
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said in a statement that several thousand Apple devices had been infected, including those of domestic Russian subscribers and foreign diplomats based in Russia.
It said that America’s plot showed “close cooperation” between Apple and the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. agency responsible for cryptographic and communications intelligence and security.
“Top and middle-management” affected
However FSB provided no evidence of its accusations that Apple cooperated with, or had any awareness of, the spying campaign.
Apple denied the allegation. “We have never worked with any government to insert a backdoor into any Apple product and never will.”
Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky said that dozens of his employees’ phones were compromised in what his company called “an extremely complex, professionally targeted cyberattack” that had targeted workers in “top and middle-management.”
Oldest traces back in 2019
Kaspersky researcher Igor Kuznetsov said his company had independently discovered abnormal traffic on its corporate Wi-Fi network around the start of the year.
He said he could not comment on Moscow’s allegation that Americans were responsible for the hacking or that thousands of others had been targeted.
The company said the oldest traces of infection it discovered dated back to 2019.
“As of the time of writing in June 2023, the attack is ongoing,” the company said.
It added that while its staff was hit, “we are quite confident that Kaspersky was not the main target of this cyberattack.”
The United States is the world’s top cyber power in terms of intent and capability followed by China, Russia, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Both the Kremlin and Russia’s foreign ministry highlighted the urgency of the matter.
US collecting large-scale data?
“The hidden data collection was carried out through software vulnerabilities in U.S.-made mobile phones,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“The U.S. intelligence services have been using IT corporations for decades in order to collect large-scale data of Internet users without their knowledge,” the ministry said..
Officials in Russia, who themselves western spies,have a very sophisticated domestic surveillance structure, have long questioned the security of U.S. technology.
iPhones involvement in 2024 elections
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said all officials in the presidential administration knew that gadgets such as iPhones were “absolutely transparent.”
Earlier this year, the Kremlin told officials involved in preparations for Russia’s 2024 presidential election to stop using Apple iPhones
There were concerns that the phones were vulnerable to Western intelligence agencies.
