New Delhi: The central government on Thursday said that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has initiated a probe and has sent a notice to Apple after at least seven opposition leaders claimed that they received email from the technology giant warning them about the ‘state-sponsored’ attackers that were potentially remotely trying to compromise the iPhones associated with their IDs.
“CERT-In, he national nodal agency for responding to computer security incidents, has started its probe… they (Apple) will cooperate in this probe,” IT Secretary S Krishnan said.
Earlier, the union minister for electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw had said that the government will “get to the bottom” of the threat alerts being sent by the tech giant over the iPhones to several leaders and sought Apple’s cooperation for the same.
“The Government of Bharat takes its role of protecting the privacy and security of all citizens very seriously and will investigate to get to the bottom of these notifications. In light of such information and widespread speculation, we have also asked Apple to join the investigation with real, accurate information on the alleged state sponsored attacks,” Vaishnaw had said in a string of posts on X, (formerly Twitter).
Meanwhile, a political furore has been triggered over the ‘threat alerts’ with the Congress demanding a probe into the controversy by Lok Sabha’s Standing Committee on Information and Technology. Congress MP and son of former home minister P Chidambaram, Karthi Chidambaram said on Wednesday that he was writing to the chairperson of the panel, Prataprao Jadhav, demanding summons to Apple over its alerts to politicians warning against “state-sponsored attack”.
BJP MP Nishikant Dubey took a dig and said the panel was not being run by Shashi Tharoor or Rahul Gandhi (both Congress leaders) but in accordance with Lok Sabha’s rules and regulations.
On Tuesday, almost two dozen opposition leaders including TMC MP Mahua Moitra, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, AAP MP Raghav Chadha claimed they had received an alert on their Apple iPhones warning them against “state-sponsored attackers trying to remotely compromise” their devices.