NEW DELHI: India’s cyber security unit is investigating allegations by opposition politicians of attempted phone tapping after they reported receiving Apple iPhone warnings of “state-sponsored attackers”, media reported on Thursday.

India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has opened a probe into the complaints, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

“Apple will cooperate in this probe,” S. Krishnan, secretary for the electronics and information ministry, was quoted as saying.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the information and technology minister, said that the government was “concerned” by the complaints.

“The Government of Bharat (India) 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,” he said on social media.

Opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi said his staff members had received the iPhone warning message, as well as opposition lawmakers including Shashi Tharoor, Mahua Moitra and Priyanka Chaturvedi.

“The government may do as much phone tapping as it wants, I am not bothered,” Gandhi said. “It can take my phone; I am not scared.”

India’s government was accused in 2021 of using the controversial Pegasus spyware technology to surveil political opponents, activists and journalists, claims it denied.

The government has declined to reply to questions about whether India or any of its state agencies had purchased Pegasus spyware for surveillance.

Apple has not commented on the case, but its website explains that threat notifications are “designed to inform and assist users who may have been targeted by state-sponsored attackers”.Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was quoted in the Indian Express newspaper as saying that CERT-In, the computer emergency response team based in New Delhi, had started the probe, adding that “Apple confirmed it has received the notice for investigation”.

A political aide to Vaishnaw and two officials in the federal home ministry said that all the cyber security concerns raised by the politicians were being scrutinised.

This week, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of trying to hack into opposition politicians’ mobile phones after some lawmakers shared screenshots on social media of a notification quoting the iPhone manufacturer as saying: “Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID”.

A senior minister from Modi’s government also said he had received the same notification on his phone.

Apple said it did not attribute the threat notifications to “any specific state-sponsored attacker”, adding that “it’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected”.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2023