Apple recently notified users in 99 countries of potential mercenary spyware attacks

Apple reportedly sent notifications to users in 99 countries warning of potential mercenary spyware attacks, as German authorities investigate reports that lawmakers and government officials may have been targeted. Here are the details.

Apple sends out fresh batch of spyware attack alerts

A couple of reports from The Financial Times and TechCrunch today offer complementary details about a new wave of Apple threat notifications warning users that they may have been targeted by mercenary spyware.

As we’ve covered before, Apple periodically sends out threat notifications to users it believes may have been targeted by mercenary spyware attacks. The company doesn’t disclose who may be behind the attacks or confirm whether a device has been compromised, but advises recipients to take the warnings seriously and seek expert assistance.

You can learn more about Apple’s recommendations for protecting against mercenary spyware, including how to enable Lockdown Mode, here.

Back to today’s reports, The Financial Times says that German lawmakers and government officials began receiving threat notifications from Apple last Thursday, prompting the country’s Federal Office for Information Security to issue an urgent warning over the weekend.

The agency advised recipients to “assume their device is no longer secure,” while the German government said it was “taking the incident and the warning very seriously” and “working flat out to investigate the circumstances of the incident.”

The FT noted that German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius declined to say whether Chancellor Friedrich Merz was among those affected, and added that the attacks reportedly exploited a “zero-click” vulnerability, allowing attackers to compromise devices without any interaction.

Knowledge of their targets’ phone numbers was all that the hackers needed to carry out the attack.

As it reported on the alerts, TechCrunch noted that “others outside of Germany also received the recent threat alert from Apple,” including Radwan Mortada, a Beirut-based filmmaker, who shared his alert on X.

From TechCrunch:

It’s unclear who is behind this latest round of spyware attacks, or which government may have orchestrated the targeting. Per the notice received by Mortada, Apple said its latest batch of threat notifications went out to users in 99 countries.

Mortada also noted in his tweet that he had previously been targeted by Pegasus spyware in 2017 and 2021, and that he does not know who was behind the latest attempt or whether it was connected to an investigative documentary he directed.