Government Tried To Hack Our iPhones, India's Opposition Leaders Say After Receiving Apple Alerts

India's opposition leaders have accused the government of trying to hack their iPhones after receiving warning messages from Apple.

The tech giant had sent warning messages to a number of Indian opposition leaders and journalists that their iPhones may have been targeted by "state-sponsored attackers." The company also noted that it could be a false alarm.

"Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID," read screenshots of the alert shared by politicians on social media.

"If your device is compromised by a state-sponsored attacker, they may be able to remotely access your sensitive data, communications, or even the camera and microphone," the Apple message read. "While it's possible this is a false alarm, please take this warning seriously."

Rahul Gandhi, a lawmaker and leader of India's main opposition party the Indian National Congress, said people in his office and several opposition leaders had received the message from Apple warning about state-sponsored attackers.

"Hack us all you want," Gandhi said at a news conference Tuesday. "But we (opposition) will not stop questioning you."

The iPhone maker said it does not attribute such threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attackers.

"State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete. It's possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms or that some attacks are not detected. We are unable to provide information about what causes us to issue threat notifications, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behavior to evade detection in the future," the company said in a statement Tuesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party has rejected allegations of government snooping. Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the government "is concerned about this issue and it will go to the bottom of it."

He said a probe had been initiated and asked Apple to join the investigation.

The government has been accused of placing opposing voices under surveillance in the past as well. After WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against Israel's NSO Group in 2019, Indian activists and politicians accused the federal government of targeting them with the firm's spyware, known as Pegasus.