Row As Apple Sends Hacking Alert To Several Oppn Leaders

At least nine Opposition leaders said on Tuesday that they were sent emails by Apple warning them of hacking attempts by unidentified "state-sponsored" attackers, prompting the government to ask the American tech company to share more details amid a political row.

- Aditi Agrawal

Among the politicians who purportedly got emails were the Congress's Shashi Tharoor, Pawan Khera and Supriya Shrinate, the Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav, the Shiv Sena's Priyanka Chaturvedi, the CPI(M)'s Sitaram Yechury, the Trinamool Congress's Mahua Moitra, the Aam Aadmi Party's Raghav Chadha, and the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen's Asaduddin Owaisi.

Others who said they got similar messages also included The Wire's Siddharth Varadarajan and Observer Research Foundation's Samir Saran. The Bharatiya Janata Party's IT cell head Amit Malviya told news channels on Tuesday evening that Union minister Piyush Goyal also got such a notification.

Union information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the government will "get to the bottom" of the issue.

"The Government of Bharat 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. In light of such information and widespread speculation, we have also asked Apple to join the investigation with real, accurate information on the alleged state sponsored attacks," Vaishnaw said in a string of posts on X, formerly Twitter.

"There are many compulsive critics in our country. Their one and only job is to criticise the government as and when they wake up, as and when they find an opportunity. You must have all seen the advisory issued by Apple. This is a vague advisory. It is based on certain estimations that they have done. Apple has already clarified that their encryption system is of highest possible order. They have also clarified and issued a statement saying that this kind of advisory has been issued in 150 countries," he said.