Apple's technical team to visit India for threat notification investigation

Apple is sending its technical and cybersecurity experts to India to meet officials investigating the threat notifications it sent to multiple opposition politicians and journalists. Several Opposition MPs, including TMC's Mahua Moitra, Congress' Shashi Tharoor said they received a notification from Apple, saying their devices were being targeted by state-sponsored attackers. Denying the charge of spying, the government ordered an investigations and sought clarification from Apple as well.  

IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw rejected the allegations of hacking by the Centre, while stating that they would conduct a thorough probe.  

In a post on X, he said, "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." 

The same day, Apple issued a statement saying, "Since enabling the Threat Notifications feature, Apple has sent Threat Notifications to individuals whose accounts are in nearly 150 countries." 

The Centre earlier announced that it had sent a notice to Apple regarding the threat notification received by several members of Parliament. The threat notification read, "State-sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone". 

Centre also said that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has initiated an investigation into Apple threat notification. CERT-In is the national nodal agency for responding to computer security incidents as and when they occur.