Apple warns iPhone owners about ‘mercenary spyware attacks’

Apple issued a warning message to a portion of iPhone owners in 98 countries on Wednesday, alerting them that they’re being “targeted by a mercenary spyware attack” that’s “trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID,” TechCrunch reports. “This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously,” the company noted in an English version of the message. It didn’t identify the source(s) of the attack or the number of people affected.

One of the countries impacted, however, is India, where several journalists and opposition politicians received similar warnings from Apple in October. Apple described those earlier attacks only as “state-sponsored,” but one possibility was that they were linked to the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The government was separately accused of cracking down on opponents in other, more public ways to cement its position going into the then-upcoming Indian general election. The BJP is moreover a Hindu nationalist party, which has led to conflict with the country’s Muslim and Sikh minorities.

Human rights group Amnesty International eventually said that it had detected the use of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware against Indian journalists. While Pegasus is nominally meant to be used by governments to spy on terrorists and other legitimate targets, some of NSO’s clients are known to abuse the tool to quash dissent.

Apple isn’t saying whether the new round of attacks involves Pegasus. It’s also refusing to say how it detects spyware beyond “internal threat-intelligence information and investigations.” The company has issued a number of spyware warnings since 2021 — this week’s is the second in 2024 alone, the previous one reaching 92 countries in April.

What can you do to protect yourself against spyware?

Some basic security measures you can take include switching to a complex password for your Apple ID and enabling two-factor authentication (2FA). You should also avoid tapping on links in suspicious emails, texts, and websites.

A major problem, however, is that spyware as sophisticated as Pegasus can execute what’s called a “zero-click” attack — that is, it can gain access to your iPhone without any interaction on your part. Simply receiving a malicious text via iMessage could compromise your security.

If you’ve been alerted to a spyware attack, iPhones running iOS 16 or later can enable Lockdown Mode. This sharply tightens the security of functions like messaging, web browsing, and wireless connectivity, but at the expense of some features and ease-of-use.