Germany Warns Lawmakers’ iPhones May Have Been Hacked With Spyware
Germany’s federal cybersecurity office, the BSI, says Bundestag members and other prominent people received Apple warnings about possible attacks on their iPhones. Apple sent the latest batch of alerts to users in 99 countries.
The German government is warning politicians and public figures that they may have been targeted with government-backed spyware. The warning came days after Apple began notifying people that their iPhones might have been hacked.
In a note published over the weekend, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Germany's national cybersecurity agency, said it had learned that members of the Bundestag, the German parliament, and other unnamed notable individuals had received Apple warnings about possible cyberattacks. According to the Financial Times, government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said Berlin was taking the incident and the warning very seriously. He did not say who in the federal government was targeted, including whether Chancellor Friedrich Merz was among them.
How Apple's alerts work
Apple periodically sends so-called threat notifications to people it believes may have been targeted by spyware. Such software can steal messages, location data and other sensitive information from phones. It often relies on zero-click exploits, which can compromise a device almost invisibly because the victim does not need to click a link or open a file.
Apple does not attribute attacks to particular governments and does not say whether a phone has actually been compromised. For that reason, the BSI advised that anyone receiving such a notification should assume their device may have been compromised.
Alerts beyond Germany
People outside Germany also received the alerts. Radwan Mortada, a Beirut-based filmmaker, said on X that he was warned of “another attack” on his device, having already been targeted by spyware in 2021. According to the notice he received, Apple's latest round of notifications went to users in 99 countries.
It remains unclear who is behind this wave of attacks or which government may have orchestrated the targeting.
The spyware market
Governments rarely build such tools themselves. Many buy them from private vendors, often called “mercenary spyware” makers. The best known is Israel's NSO Group, which sells the controversial Pegasus spyware. Germany's federal criminal police agency, the BKA, reportedly bought access to Pegasus in 2019.
