The FSB has released a statement that it has uncovered an "intelligence action by American intelligence agencies" using iPhones. The press release says that the FSB has identified anomalies “due to the operation of previously unknown malware” and specific only to users of Apple devices.
“It has been established that several thousand telephone sets of this brand have been infected. At the same time, in addition to domestic subscribers, facts of infection of foreign numbers and subscribers using SIM cards registered with diplomatic missions and embassies in Russia, including the countries of the NATO bloc and the post-Soviet space, as well as Israel, the SAR and China, were revealed.
Immediately after the publication of this statement, a release from Kaspersky Lab appeared. It says that the company's employees were subjected to a cyberattack.
“Our company's experts have discovered an extremely complex, professional targeted cyberattack using Apple mobile devices. The purpose of the attack was the inconspicuous introduction of a spyware module into the iPhone of the company's employees, both top management and middle managers, ”says Evgeny Kaspersky, head of the company.
According to him, the attack was carried out using an invisible iMessage message with a malicious attachment, which, using a number of vulnerabilities in the iOS operating system, is executed on the device and installs spyware. The implementation of the program is completely hidden from the user and without any participation, writes Kaspersky. Further, according to him, the spyware also quietly transfers private information to remote servers: recordings from a microphone, photos from instant messengers, location and information about a number of other activities of the owner of the infected device.
Kaspersky also said that the phones of several dozen employees were infected.