Apple has warned the users of iPhone in India about the possibility of a Pegasus-like “mercenary spyware attack” and requested their customers to tread cautiously.
This is the second notification that Apple has sent this year to India and 98 countries; with a similar one coming in April, people who were aware of the development said as per media reports.
It has been sending notifications of a similar nature since 2021 to more than 121 countries.
Apple has stressed its users not to divulge sensitive information to potential attackers who lurk under the facade of user assistance and exercise caution.
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An investigation led by Citizen Lab and Amnesty International revealed that journalists, lawyers, and politicians across the world have been targets of the NSO Group's spyware, Pegasus.
In October 2023, Apple alerted several opposition leaders and Journalists like Shashi Tharoor, Sitaram Yechury, and Mahua Moitra with a "threat notification" of a potential spyware attack on their iPhones.
Apple stated that these malware attacks could “cost millions of dollars and are individually deployed against a very small number of people, but the targeting is ongoing and global”.
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“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,” Apple reportedly said in the threat notification mail.
Apple and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) did not respond to the emails by media reportedly seeking a response on the latest round of notifications.
In April, CERT-in, India's nodal agency to detect cyber threats found security loopholes in iPhone and iPad devices making the devices vulnerable to attacks.
It was reported that Safari Browser version 17.41.1 in iOS and iPads before version 17.4.1 could allow arbitrary code to be executed compromising the security of the device.
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