In response to recent alerts on "state-sponsored attacks" sent to opposition leaders and other public figures in the nation on their iPhones, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology (IT) is considering calling Apple representatives to a future meeting. A news agency reported on this development, citing a committee secretariat official.
According to the person, the committee's secretariat is taking the situation very seriously and has voiced "great concern."
Tuesday saw the start of a controversy as a number of opposition leaders claimed to have gotten notifications from Apple about "state-sponsored attackers" attempting to breach their iPhones and accused the government of hacking. In response, the government refuted the accusations and promised a comprehensive probe.
The leaders of the Congress, Shashi Tharoor, Pawan Khera, KC Venugopal, Supriya Shrinate, TS Singhdeo, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Mahua Moitra, MP for the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Sitaram Yechury, General Secretary of the CPI (M), and Chief of the Samajwadi Party (SP), were among those who received such notifications.
Apple also forwarded the message to Asaduddin Owaisi, the president of AIMIM; Priyanka Chaturvedi, an MP for Shiv Sena (UBT); Raghav Chadha of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP); and a few of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi's staffers.
Several other people received similar notifications, including an OSD belonging to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the president of the think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), and Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of The Wire.
Apple released a statement asserting that it "did not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker" as the controversy grew. It went on, noting that the warnings "may be false alarms."
Apple released an advisory in almost 150 countries, and the government added that the alerts were "vague" in nature, although it said it was worried and that it had requested an investigation into the event.
Asserting that the opposition was engaging in "distraction politics," IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw dismissed the opposition's criticism of the government, claiming that they were unable to accept the nation's advancement under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's direction. And nevertheless, he gave the assurance that "we will look into it to find out why these notifications were sent."
Additionally, Vaishnaw stated that Cert-In, the national nodal body for handling computer security issues, would handle the probe because it is of a highly "technical kind."
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