Russia’s Federal Security Service: US hacked thousands of iPhones to spy

Russia has announced that the US has infiltrated Apple iPhone phones in the country for spying. Apple denied the allegations, while Kaspersky said the iPhones of top employees were compromised.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced in a statement that it had uncovered an American espionage operation that seized thousands of iPhones using sophisticated surveillance software. Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab said dozens of employees’ devices were seized as a result of the operation.

Russia: “Apple cooperates for espionage”

The FSB, the successor to the KGB, said in a statement that several thousand iPhone devices were infected, including devices of foreign diplomats based in Russia and the former Soviet Union, as well as elements in the country. “The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action by American special services using Apple mobile devices,” the FSB said in a statement.

The FSB claims close cooperation between Apple and the National Security Agency (NSA), the US intelligence and security agency. Apple flatly denied these claims in a statement: “We have never worked with any government to put a backdoor on any Apple product, and we never will.”

Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky said on Twitter that dozens of employees’ phones were seized in what he described as a “highly sophisticated, professionally targeted cyberattack” targeting his company’s “top and middle management” employees. Kaspersky stated in its blog post that the earliest traces of infection it discovered are from 2019, and the attack continued as of June 2023. “We are quite confident that Kaspersky is not the main target of this cyberattack,” the blog post said.