Apple is sending its technical and cybersecurity experts to India to meet officials investigating the threat notifications the US-based technology giant sent to multiple opposition politicians and journalists, two senior government officials have said.
On October 31, several Opposition MPs, including TMC's Mahua Moitra, Shiv Sena (UBT's) Priyanka Chaturvedi, Congress' Shashi Tharoor and AAP's Raghav Chadha, said they received a notification from Apple, saying their devices were being targeted by state-sponsored attackers.
It touched off a political firestorm with the opposition accusing the government of spying. Denying the charge the government ordered an investigations and sought clarification from Apple as well.
As of now, Apple's representatives in India have interacted with the government officials but its technical experts are based abroad.
Officials said that there was a visa issue which delayed the experts' but it had been resolved and the visit should happen soon, the officials said.
Virus led to threat notifications?
Another government official, giving insight into the investigation, claimed it was a vulnerability in Apple's systems that allegedly exposed citizens across the world to viruses.
"There is no big thing that has come out. There was a vulnerability for a while, in that period there was an attempt to spread viruses to many citizens across countries. Threat actor is a standard language which is used (by platforms) to not take any responsibility of the existing vulnerabilities in one's system. It becomes easy to blame states and governments," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Moneycontrol has reached out to Apple for comments and the article will be updated when a response is received.
After the opposition leaders raised the issue, the government sent a notice to Apple and initiated an investigation. The probe is being conducted by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
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