Russia‘s Federal Security Service (FSB) has accused the US of using Apple iPhones to spy. The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB said that it had uncovered a US National Security Agency (NSA) plot using previously unknown malware to access specially made so-called backdoor vulnerabilities in Apple phones. Incidentally, this is the same NSA that had tried to garner public opinion on its side as it objected to Apple’s refusal to give it access to user data.
According to a report in news agency Reuters, the FSB says that several thousand Apple phones, including domestic Russian subscribers, had been infected by this spying malware. It said that the plot showed the close relationship between Apple and the NSA. The Russian spy agency further claimed that telephones belonging to foreign diplomats based in Russia and the former Soviet Union, including those from NATO members, Israel, Syria and China, had been targeted.
Terms it “intelligence action of the American special services”
“The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action of the American special services using Apple mobile devices,” the FSB said in a statement as per the report. “The hidden data collection was carried out through software vulnerabilities in US-made mobile phones,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “[Apple] provides American intelligence agencies with a wide range of opportunities to monitor any persons of interest to the White House and their partners in anti-Russian activities, and their own citizens,” the statement said.
“The US intelligence services have been using IT corporations for decades in order to collect large-scale data of Internet users without their knowledge,” the ministry said.
Neither Apple nor the NSA have so far commented on these claims.
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