Russia accused the United States of hacking thousands of iPhones inside Russia, as part of a major espionage campaign.
A Russian technology company came out to reveal the method that the American National security agency used in its iPhone espionage operation.
The Russian based, and the widely known technology company that is specialized in internet and cyber security, Kaspersky, said that it discovered a spyware on dozens of its employees’ iPhones, including those of senior and middle management.
Kaspersky found that over the years, the spyware had been stealing users’ private information from devices, including microphone recordings, images sent in messages and geolocation information, and sending it to a remote server, CEO Eugene Kaspersky wrote in a blog post.
Russia’s National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents has publicly stated that the compromise indicators revealed by Kaspersky are the same as those disclosed by the Russian FSB.
Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) said last Thursday that the US intelligence community had designed a backdoor into Apple’s iPhones.
It also said that it had discovered malware on registered phones of Russian citizens, foreign diplomats residing in Russia, and others believed to be involved in diplomatic missions in Israel, China, the former Soviet Union republics, and NATO countries.
The FSB also claimed that Apple was in close cooperation with the US intelligence community — especially the National Security Agency.
On the other hand, a spokesperson for the US National Security Agency declined to comment.
Apple said in a statement that the company “has never worked with any government to introduce a ‘backdoor’ into any Apple product and never will”.
The Russian government didn’t include any technical details nor specifications regarding the malware that was detected on the compromised iPhone devices.
