MOSCOW, June 1 (Reuters) – Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday it had uncovered a US spying operation that compromised thousands of iPhones using sophisticated surveillance software.
Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab said dozens of its employees’ devices were compromised in the operation.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said in a statement that several thousand Apple Inc. (AAPL.O) devices had been infected, including those of domestic Russian subscribers, as well as those of foreign diplomats based in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
“The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action by US special services using Apple mobile devices,” the FSB said in a statement.
The FSB said the plot showed “close cooperation” between Apple and the National Security Agency, the US agency responsible for communications and cryptographic intelligence and security. The FSB provided no evidence that Apple cooperated with or was aware of the spying campaign.
The NSA declined to comment. Apple and the White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky said on Twitter that dozens of his employees’ phones were compromised in the operation, that his company described as “an extremely complex and professionally targeted cyberattack” that had targeted workers in “senior and middle management.”
Kaspersky researcher Igor Kuznetsov told Reuters that his company had independently discovered anomalous traffic on its corporate Wi-Fi network earlier in the year. He said Kaspersky did not circulate his findings to Russia’s Computer Emergency Response Team until Thursday.
He said he could not comment on Moscow. allegation that the Americans were responsible for the piracy or that thousands more people had been attacked.
“It’s very difficult to attribute something to someone,” he said. “We were only investigating our own compromise, only within our own network.”
The FSB said the Americans had engaged diplomats from Israel, Syria, China and NATO members in the spying campaign.
Israeli officials declined to comment. Chinese, Syrian and NATO representatives could not immediately comment.
WE SMOKE?
The United States is the world’s leading cyber power in terms of intent and capability, according to Cyber Power Index 2022 from the Belfer Center at Harvard Universityfollowed by China, Russia, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Both the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry noted the importance of the matter.
“The hidden data collection was carried out through software vulnerabilities in US-made mobile phones,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“US intelligence services have been using IT corporations for decades to collect large-scale data from Internet users without their knowledge,” the ministry said.
Russian authorities said the plot had been uncovered as part of a joint effort by FSB officers and those of the Federal Guard Service (FSO), a powerful agency headed by the Kremlin’s bodyguard and which was also the Ninth Directorate of the KGB.
Officials in Russia, which Western spies say has built a highly sophisticated internal surveillance structure, have long questioned the security of American technology.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said all presidential administration officials knew that devices like iPhones were “absolutely transparent.”
“Using them for official purposes is unacceptable and prohibited,” Peskov said, adding that officials were free to use iPhones for unofficial private communications.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has always said he doesn’t have a smartphone, though the Kremlin has said the former KGB spy uses the internet from time to time.
PHONE SPY SOFTWARE
Kaspersky Laboratory saying the spyware was delivered by an invisible message that exploited vulnerabilities in Apple’s iOS operating system. The phone information would be sent to remote servers.
Kaspersky said the oldest traces of infection it discovered date back to 2019. “As of this writing in June 2023, the attack continues,” the company said. He added that while his staff was targeted, “we are pretty sure that Kaspersky was not the main target of this cyberattack.”
The disclosure is likely to deepen suspicions about Apple in Russia.
Earlier this year, the Kremlin told officials involved in the preparations for Russia’s 2024 presidential election that stop using Apple iPhones due to concerns that the devices are vulnerable to Western intelligence agencies, the Kommersant newspaper reported.
Writing by Guy Faulconbridge Additional reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington, James Pearson in London, and Zeba Siddiqui in San Francisco Editing by Mark Potter, Andrew Heavens, and Matthew Lewis
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