'Fully embellished': Indian minister rebuts report on centre allegedly targetting Apple

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India's minister of state for information technology, rebutted a recent report by The Washington Post that accused the Narendra Modi government of targetting Apple after the tech giant warned Indian journalists and opposition leaders that government hackers might have tried to break into their iPhones.

In a post on X on Thursday (Dec 28), Minister Chandrasekhar said, "This story is half facts, fully embellished."

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"Left out of the story is Apple's response on Oct 31- the day of threat notifications," Chandrasekhar said and shared Apple's response on Oct 31.

"Apple does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker," Apple's response had said.

"State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete. It’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected," the tech giant had said,adding it was unable to provide information about what caused it to issue a threat notification.

What did The Washington Post report say?

The Washington Post report, published on Wednesday, said that officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) publiclyquestioned whether Apple's internal threat algorithms were faulty and announced an investigation into the security of Apple devices.

"A day after Apple warned independent Indian journalists and oppositionparty politicians in Octoberthat government hackers may have tried to break into their iPhones, officials under Prime Minister Narendra Modi promptly took action — against Apple," the report said.

Also watch |What does Apple's warning of 'state-sponsored attack' mean, experts explain

Speaking to the publication, three people familiar with the matter said that senior Modi government officials called the tech giant's India representatives to demand that the company help soften the political impact of the warnings.

The officials also summoned an Apple security expert from outside India to a meeting in New Delhi, where government representatives pressed the Apple official to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings to users, the people told the American media outlet.

Chandrasekhar said that his and the central government's response to this incident had been consistent and clear.

"Apple was asked to join the enquiry with CERT-In and meetings have been held and the enquiry is ongoing. Those are the facts," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)