By Rajwa Quasim
Apple has sent an unusually large number of notifications to customers warning that their devices may have been targeted by spyware attacks. The latest wave of notifications was sent on Aug. 14 to users in 110 countries, making it the company’s largest such notification campaign to date.
The company issued these warnings when it believed users may have been targeted by mercenary spyware — malware often developed by private surveillance companies and sold to governments or other state actors for surveillance purposes.
The victims were instructed to contact Access Now, a New York-based nonprofit that has a team of digital security experts providing 24/7 support to civil society groups and journalists who experience cybersecurity-related incidents. Mohammed Al-Maskati, the director of Access Now, told TechCrunch that the group has received a record number of requests for help, including from those previously alerted by Apple. He said the number of inquiries were about 30-40% higher than the nonprofit typically receives.
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When a threat notification was issued, it stated: “Apple detected a mercenary spyware attack targeted at your iPhone. There are actions you can take now to protect your data and device.” Apple also sent notifications by email and displayed them when users logged into their accounts. The alerts did not necessarily mean that a device had been hacked. Instead, Apple issued them when it detected activity or intelligence suggesting that a user may have been targeted.
The company also introduced additional protections through Lockdown Mode, which users could enable to limit certain device functions and reduce the ways hackers could compromise a device.
“Notifications create a critical signal that a community is being targeted. People get an alert, and then some of them reach out and seek help. Often this kicks off an investigation that reveals many, many more cases,” said Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at digital research group Citizen Lab.
Regarding the recent wave of notifications, he added, “The scale and geographic diversity of public posts about receiving notifications are unprecedented. For every public notification like this, you can imagine there’s a huge notification iceberg that the public will never learn about. This is a clear indication that something bigger is going on.”
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Among the users who publicly shared that they had received a notification was a Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier. He said he was surprised by the warning and did not think he was important enough to be targeted. He also said some other soldiers in the Ukrainian military received the same notification.
Poland’s government under Prime Minister Donald Tusk investigated the alleged misuse of Pegasus phone spyware by the previous government and arrested Piotr Pogonowski, the former head of Poland’s internal security agency. He was later brought before Parliament to testify. In 2021, Citizen Lab and Amnesty International concluded that NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware had been used against three critics of the previous Polish government, including a senator who was allegedly targeted dozens of times ahead of the 2019 parliamentary elections. The investigation eventually led Poland’s Senate to conclude that the use of Pegasus was unlawful.