{"id":23662,"date":"2024-04-11T04:20:01","date_gmt":"2024-04-11T04:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/11\/exclusive-apple-warns-users-of-mercenary-spyware-attack-india-91-other-countries-impacted\/"},"modified":"2024-04-11T04:20:01","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T04:20:01","slug":"exclusive-apple-warns-users-of-mercenary-spyware-attack-india-91-other-countries-impacted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/11\/exclusive-apple-warns-users-of-mercenary-spyware-attack-india-91-other-countries-impacted\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Apple warns users of “mercenary spyware” attack; India, 91 other countries impacted"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Apple is likely to soon inform its users in India and 91 other countries that they were possible victims of a \u201cmercenary spyware\u201d attack attempt in which someone tried to gain unlawful access to their devices, sources in the know of the development told ET.<\/p>\n

Mercenary spyware attacks, such as those using Pegasus from the NSO Group, are exceptionally rare and vastly more sophisticated than regular cybercriminal activity or consumer malware, the threat notification mail sent by Apple read. ET has seen a copy of the threat notification sent to users.<\/p>\n

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In the notification, Apple also said it detected that the user was \u201cbeing targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone\u201d which is associated with a particular Apple ID.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it\u2019s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning \u2014 please take it seriously,\u201d the company\u2019s threat notification sent to users is likely to say.<\/p>\n

Late on Wednesday India time, Apple also updated its support page to include tips for users who had been possible targets of the mercenary spyware attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cApple threat notifications are designed to inform and assist users who may have been individually targeted by mercenary spyware attacks, likely because of who they are or what they do,\u201d the iPhone maker said on the updated support page.<\/p>\n

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In response to ET\u2019s queries, an Apple India spokesperson redirected to the threat notification support page.This is the second round of threat notifications that have been sent to users across the globe. In October 2023, Apple had sent similar a notification to users in several countries including India warning them of a \u201cstate-sponsored\u201d attack on their devices. The Cupertino-headquartered company had, however, not specified which state actor was behind these attacks.<\/p>\n

In the threat notifications then sent to users, Apple had said that users facing such attacks are \u201cindividually targeted because of who they are or what they do.<\/p>\n

Unlike traditional cybercriminals, state-sponsored attackers apply \u201cexceptional resources to target a very small number of specific individuals and their devices, which makes these attacks much harder to detect and prevent\u201d, Apple had then said in a blog post.<\/p>\n

According to the company, these threat notifications have gone to users in at least 150 countries since 2021. Apple also denies providing more details about the possible attackers as doing so may help the attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future.<\/p>\n

Before 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 made by Pegasus, a spyware manufactured by the Israeli company NSO.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Apple is likely to soon inform its users in India and 91 other countries that they were possible victims of a \u201cmercenary spyware\u201d attack attempt in which someone tried to gain unlawful access to their devices, sources in the know of the development told ET. Mercenary spyware attacks, such as those using Pegasus from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img.etimg.com\/photo\/88591548.cms","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[828,28925,28928,28924,28926,28927,2601,245,6728,10516,273,28929,28930,712,5219],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23662"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23664,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23662\/revisions\/23664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}