TMC MP Mahua Moitra said on Tuesday said she will be writing to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla requesting him to follow Raj Dharma to protect opposition MPs over the purported warning by Apple of “state-sponsored attackers trying to remotely compromise” her iPhone.
She also urged Birla to summon the Union Home Ministry officials over the issue.
In a post on X, Moitra said, ”Writing officially to @loksabhaspeaker @ombirlakota requesting he follow RajDharma to protect Opposition MPs & summon @HMOIndia officials ASAP on our phones/email being hacked. Privileges Committee needs to take this up. @AshwiniVaishnaw this is a real breach you need to worry about.”
She also compared the situation to the Emergency period experienced by the country in 1975.
Besides Moitra, several other opposition leaders such as Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, Aam Aadmi Party’s Raghav Chadha, Congress’ Shashi Tharoor and his party’s media and publicity department head Pawan Khera reported receiving messages from Apple on Tuesday, cautioning them about ”state-sponsored attackers attempting remote compromises” on their iPhones. They subsequently shared screenshots of these warnings on their social media platforms.
”Apple does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker,” the firm said.
State-sponsored attackers, it said, are ”very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time”.
”Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete. It’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected,” it said.
