Before the elections, the cybersecurity team of U.S. vice president and then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris reached out to Apple asking for help, according to Forbes, after a tool that’s designed to detect spyware on iPhones flagged anomalies on two devices belonging to campaign staffers. Apple declined to forensically analyze the phones, per Forbes.
The company’s response is no surprise to the digital defenders working with at-risk populations often targeted by spyware.
In the last few years, Apple has been sending notifications to targets and victims of government spyware, alerting them that they may have been hacked, and directing them to get help. Crucially, Apple doesn’t tell the targets to get in touch with its own security engineers, but with the nonprofit Access Now, which runs a digital helpline for people in civil society who suspect they have been targets of government spyware.
“Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple Account,” reads a recent alert, which Access Now shared with TechCrunch. “This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously.”
While it may look like Apple is abdicating its responsibility to protect its users, cybersecurity experts who work with human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents, generally agree that Apple’s approach in alerting victims to spyware attacks is the right one.
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Do you have more information about government spyware and its makers? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
“These notifications have been a game changer for spyware accountability research,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, a nonprofit that investigates spyware and is housed at the University of Toronto Munk School of Globa …