Apple again warns activists and journalists from state malware

Apple has sent several citizens of the European Union to warnings that presumably government -financed actors have tried to attack their devices. The reported the IT blog techcrunch Last week. According to the information, a whole group of users were alerted by the iPhone group, although not only the EU was affected-it should be over 100 countries. However, only two of the victims, an activist of the “new right” in the Netherlands and a journalist from Italy, have publicly commented. How serious the attacks were and who was behind them is still unknown.

Apple warns on different channels

Apple had already made recognized Spyware attacks on his users in the past. Apple sends messages by imessage and the email address stored at iCloud. In addition, when logging into the Official Apple account website Information displayed. The group also refers to Civil society help offers And explains how users activate the blocking mode (Lockdown Mode), for example, which can make certain forms of attack more difficult.

Ciro Pellegrino, one of the two known people affected for the online newspaper Fanpage.it wrote, said Apple told him that he was targeted a spyware advise. He didn’t know who attacked him and why. Fanpage.it had previously gotten into the crosshairs of unknown players. Received a colleague Pellegrinos In the spring of WhatsApp a corresponding notificationaccording to which it was apparently tried to carry out an attack with Spyware from Paragon Solutions. After this message, two other Italian citizens went public, this time it was refugee activists.

Update quickly to iOS 18.4.1

The Dutchman Eva Vlaardingerbroek, also affected by Dutch Posted screenshots from Apple’s message. The company asked those affected to “take the warning seriously” because one was “very safe”. “This attack is probably aimed at you especially because you are who you are or what you are doing.” Vlaardingerbroek wrote that she wanted to “not be intimidated”. Neither Pellegrino nor Vlaardingerbroek gave further information about the incident compared to Techcrunch. It can be assumed that further victims will report in the coming weeks.

It remains unclear whether Apple has succeeded in warding off the attacks. The notification of the Spyware product Pegasus is mentioned in the notification. Apple recommends that affected people update those as quickly as possible to iOS 18.4.1, the recently critical security gaps (MacOS and other Apple operating systems were also affected).