The probe found that there was “some vulnerability in Apple’s systems for a period during which several threat actors across the world tried to spread some virus on Apple devices”, the official said on condition of anonymity.
On October 30-31, Apple sent out notifications to several politicians, their staff, journalists and some activists saying, “State-sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone. Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID.”
The official said Apple’s notifications were in a “standard language” used by most companies in such situations, adding that companies tended to “blame” the government as that was “easy”.
“Nobody wants to take the responsibility that there is a vulnerability in their systems. That is very natural. So, blaming the ‘state’ or the government is easy,” the official said.
Apple did not respond to ET’s queries seeking its comments on the development.
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In a statement earlier, Apple had said it did not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker. “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 is possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected,” the company had said.
