At least five leaders from the Opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) have received emails from Apple warning them that state-sponsored attackers were potentially remotely trying to compromise the iPhones associated with their IDs. They include Congress’s Shashi Tharoor and Pawan Khera, Shiv Sena’s Priyanka Chaturvedi, and Trinamool Congress’s Mahua Moitra.

HT has reached out to Apple for comments and confirmation and the copy will be updated accordingly.

Tharoor said he saw the email around 7am on Tuesday but got it on Monday night. On logging into his account on the Apple website, his account displayed a warning about potential compromise in red. “The email does not advise us to go public but I think it is important to go public as that is the best security we have. There is a pattern here. It is a disgrace that people are wasting taxpayers’ money this way. There are more genuine threats to national security than opposition leaders,” he said.

Tharoor added that he would not want to assume that it is the Indian government. “It could be another government as well,” he said.

Khera said he received a text message from Apple on Monday at 11:47pm but he saw the message on Tuesday morning. When HT contacted him, he had not yet checked his email about this.

Chaturvedi said she got a message followed by an email from Apple. “…they gave us some dos and don’ts to safeguard ourselves and to reach out to Apple through this 24X7 helpline website to safeguard ourselves and our identity. They expressed concerns that this is a very serious issue that should not be taken lightly.”

She added she verified it through some cyber law experts on Monday and they confirmed that it was a genuine message. “I do intend to write to the Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] and home minister [Amit Shah] of the country as well as the IT minister…[Ashwini Vaishnaw] to resolve this because the Opposition cannot function in a space where state-sponsored attacks are happening and are being monitored and surveilled all the time,” she said.

“Every single person who is now calling me, I am asking them to tweet Amit Shah ji. You can also say good morning to Amit Shah ji since he is listening in.”

The alerts from Apple came to light a year after a committee of Supreme Court-appointed experts found inconclusive evidence of the presence of Pegasus spyware in the 29 phones it analysed. The panel said the government did not cooperate with its probe while recommending new laws and measures to protect citizens from illegal surveillance and cyber attacks.

The panel found some malware in five of the phones but there was nothing conclusive to show it was Pegasus.

The Raveendran committee set up by the top court analysed devices after it was mandated to determine whether the Pegasus spyware was used on phones or other devices to access stored data, eavesdrop on conversations, intercept information, etc.

The panel’s mandate also included determining details of those targeted with the spyware, the actions taken following the alleged illegal infiltration, whether the government acquired Pegasus to spy on Indian citizens, and if it did, under what rule or guideline.

The findings of the panel were based on “sophisticated tests” conducted on the devices people voluntarily turned in. Among the tools used was one made by Amnesty International, which was among the organisations that examined Pegasus infections, and the programme was also used in other countries for forensic analysis.

In July 2021, a consortium of media outlets and investigative journalists reported that the phones of Indian ministers, politicians, activists, businessmen, and journalists were among the 50,000 selected for infection with the Pegasus malware.