Russia‘s Federal Security Service (FSB) has accused the US of using it Apple iPhones spy. The FSB, the main successor of the Soviet era KGB said it had discovered one US National Security Service (NSA) plots using previously unknown malware to access specially crafted so-called backdoor vulnerabilities in Apple Phones. Incidentally, this is the same NSA that had tried to win over public opinion by objecting to Apple’s refusal to access user data.
According to a report in Reuters news agency, the FSB says several thousand Apple phones, including domestic Russian subscribers, have been infected by this spy malware. It said the plot demonstrated the close relationship between Apple and the NSA. The Russian spy agency further claimed that phones belonging to foreign diplomats in Russia and the former Soviet Union, including those of NATO members, Israel, Syria and China, were targeted.
Calls it “U.S. Special Services Intelligence Action”
“The FSB has discovered an intelligence operation by US special services using Apple mobile devices,” the FSB said in a statement, according to the report. “The hidden data collection was carried out by software vulnerabilities in US-made mobile phones,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “(Apple) provides U.S. intelligence agencies with a wide variety of options to identify individuals of interest to the White House and their partners in anti-Russian activities, and their own citizens,” the statement said.
“U.S. intelligence agencies have been using IT companies for decades to collect large-scale data from Internet users without their knowledge,” the ministry said.
Neither Apple nor the NSA have so far commented on these claims.
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