FSB accuses Apple of working closely with US intelligence agencies after alleged “intelligence activities” were disclosed.
Russia has accused US intelligence agencies of hacking thousands of iPhones belonging to Russian users and foreign diplomats in the country.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday it had uncovered an “intelligence operation” in which the phones of Russians and diplomats from Israel, Syria, China and NATO member states had been compromised.
The FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB spy service, said Apple worked closely with US spy agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA), but offered no evidence to support its claim.
In a statement, Apple did not comment on whether iPhones had been hacked in Russia but denied working with authorities to compromise its devices.
“We have never worked with a government to put a backdoor in an Apple product, and we never will,” the California-based tech giant said.
The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Separately, the chief executive of cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said dozens of senior employees fell victim to an “extremely complex, professionally targeted cyberattack.”
In a blog post, Eugene Kaspersky said the attack was carried out using an invisible iMessage with a malicious attachment that exploited vulnerabilities in the iOS operating system.
“We are confident that Kaspersky was not the primary target of this cyberattack. “The coming days will bring more clarity and more details on the global distribution of this spyware,” Kaspersky said.
Kaspersky, which is headquartered in Moscow but has offices in more than 30 countries, did not attribute the attack to any specific country or actor.
The alleged cyberespionage campaign comes as Russia-US relations are at their most tense in decades over the Moscow war in Ukraine.
Last month, the US Department of Justice said it had halted a two-decade FSB-run malware campaign against targets in more than 50 countries.
In March, the Kremlin urged officials involved in organizing the 2024 Russian presidential election not to use iPhones over concerns the devices could be vulnerable to infiltration by Western spy agencies, local media reported.