In a surprising turn of events, various Indian opposition leaders have accused the government of making an attempt to hack their phones after they received warning messages from Apple.

The alert issued by Apple expressed concerns that the recipients were potentially "being targeted by state-sponsored attackers," though it refrained from identifying who these attackers might be.

Federal ministers, while dismissing these allegations, have referred to them as "destructive politics." Nevertheless, they expressed willingness to "investigate to get to the bottom of these notifications."

To date, approximately a dozen opposition politicians have confirmed receiving the message from Apple. Among the list are Members of Parliament such as Shashi Tharoor, KC Venugopal from the Congress party, Mahua Moitra from the Trinamool Congress, and Priyanka Chaturvedi from the Shiv Sena UBT.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his office staff also reported receiving the alert. In response, Mr. Gandhi asserted, "We are not scared. You can do as much phone tapping as you want, I don't care. If you want to take my phone, I will give it to you."

Several journalists, including Siddharth Varadarajan, a founding editor of the news website The Wire, disclosed that they had also received the alert.

Federal Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the government has requested Apple's cooperation in their investigation to provide "real, accurate information on the alleged state-sponsored attacks."

Apple's support page for users explains that "state-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time." These attackers target a "very small number of specific individuals and their devices." Apple further clarifies that it cannot divulge specific details regarding the criteria for issuing these threat notifications as it might assist state-sponsored attackers in evading future detection.

While Apple has not responded to queries from the BBC, technology analyst Prasanto K Roy stated that companies like Apple observe activity patterns to detect large-scale, coordinated malware attacks. He noted that it is technically feasible to attribute such attacks to a specific country or known state-sponsored actors, but Apple is unlikely to single out any particular entity.

Indian politicians and journalists have taken to X to share screenshots of the messages they received from Apple, with some pointing out that no member of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had confirmed receiving the notification at that point.

However, later in the day, BJP minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar revealed that his colleague Piyush Goyal had also received the alert. Mr. Chandrasekhar called for Apple to clarify what the notification meant.

Opposition leaders have sought an investigation into "who, within the 'state,' is engaged in attempting to access my phone." Furthermore, they have drawn a link between this situation and the upcoming general election scheduled for next year.

BJP leaders have countered these allegations, deeming them "baseless" and suggesting that it is Apple's responsibility to clarify the notification's intent. Amit Malviya, who oversees the BJP's IT department, accused the opposition of resorting to these allegations due to a lack of genuine issues to confront the government with.

Several opposition leaders in India had previously accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government of conducting surveillance on them. In 2019, WhatsApp disclosed in a lawsuit that Indian journalists and activists were among the targets of Pegasus, a surveillance software produced by the Israeli firm NSO Group. NSO claimed that it exclusively collaborates with government agencies.

In 2021, Indian website The Wire reported that over 300 numbers from a leaked database, associated with thousands of phone numbers utilized by government clients of NSO, belonged to Indians.

Last year, a political storm erupted after the New York Times reported that India had acquired Pegasus from Israel as part of a defense deal in 2017. Mr. Modi's government has consistently denied purchasing the spyware, which can infiltrate smartphones without the user's knowledge and access nearly all their data. Photo by Sidheeq, Wikimedia commons.