Are Pegasus-Like Spyware Attacks Targeting iPhone Users in India? What You Need to Know

Apple has issued new threat alerts to users in India and 97 other countries, warning of potential “mercenary spyware attacks” aimed at remotely compromising their iPhones.

“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 stated in a threat notification email on July 10. Moneycontrol has reviewed a copy of this email.

On the same day, Iltija Mufti, media adviser and daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, and Pushparaj Deshpande, founder of Samruddha Bharat Foundation, announced on the microblogging site X that Apple had notified them of a possible hack on their phones.

Neither Apple nor the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) responded to Moneycontrol’s queries.

Since 2021, Apple has been sending these notifications to users in over 150 countries.

In its July 10 notification, Apple informed the targeted iPhone users that such attacks “cost millions of dollars and are individually deployed against a very small number of people, but the targeting is ongoing and global.”

“The extreme cost, sophistication, and worldwide nature make mercenary spyware attacks some of the most advanced digital threats in existence today. As a result, Apple does not attribute the attacks or the notice you’re receiving to any specific attackers or geographical regions,” the notification said. The company relies solely on “internal threat-intelligence information and investigations to detect such attacks,” it added.

In the past, such notifications have sparked political controversy, with some opposition leaders, activists, and journalists accusing the government of spying on its opponents. The matter even reached the Supreme Court, where a court-appointed technical expert committee could not find Pegasus spyware in the mobile phones submitted for forensic examination.

In April, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In), the country’s central cybersecurity agency, identified numerous vulnerabilities in Apple’s operating systems for iPhones and iPads, particularly in key applications like the Safari web browser.

Cert-In highlighted that earlier versions of the Safari browser, specifically those before version 17.4.1, and iOS and iPadOS versions prior to 17.4.1, had flaws that could potentially enable attackers to execute arbitrary code on targeted devices.