Senior Indonesian officials 'targeted by spyware' last year

More than a dozenseniorIndonesiangovernment and militaryofficialsweretargetedlastyearwith spy software designed by an Israeli surveillance firm, according to nine people with knowledge of the matter.

Six of the individuals told Reuters they have targeted themselves.

The targets includedChief Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto,seniormilitary personnel,tworegional diplomats,and advisers in Indonesia's defence and foreign affairs ministries, according to the people.

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Six of theIndonesianofficialsand adviserstargetedtold Reuters they received an email message from Apple Inc in November 2021 telling themthat Apple believedofficialswere being "targetedby state-sponsored attackers."

Apple has not disclosed the identities or number of userstargeted. The company declined to comment for this story.

Apple and security researchers have said the recipients of the warnings weretargetedusing ForcedEntry, an advanced piece of software that has been used by Israeli cyber surveillance vendor NSO Group to help foreign spy agencies remotely and invisibly take control of iPhones. Another Israeli cyber firm, QuaDream, has developed a nearly identical hacking tool, Reuters has reported.

Reuters was unable to determine who made or used thespywareto target theIndonesianofficials, whether the attempts were successful, and, if so, what the hackers might have obtained as a result.

The attempt to targetIndonesianofficials, which has not previously been reported, is one of the biggest cases yet seen of the software being used against government, military anddefenceministry personnel, according to cybersecurity experts.

Spokespeople for theIndonesiangovernment, theIndonesianmilitary, theIndonesianDefence Ministryand theIndonesianCyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) did not respond to requests for comments and emailed questions.

A spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry said they wereunawareof the case and referred Reuters to BSSN.

Airlangga Hartarto, a top ally of theIndonesianpresident Joko Widodo, did not respond to questions sent to him by Reuters, nor did his representatives.

The use of ForcedEntry, which exploits a flaw in iPhones through a new hacking technique that requires no user interactions, was made public by cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab in September 2021. Google security researchers described it as the "most technically sophisticated" hacking attack they had ever seen, in a company blog post published in December.

Apple patched the vulnerability in Septemberlastyearand in November started sending notification messages to what it called a "small number of users that it discovered may have beentargeted."

In response to Reuters questions, an NSO spokesperson denied the company’s software was involved in the targeting ofIndonesianofficials, dismissing it as "contractually and technologically impossible," without specifying why. The company, which does not disclose the identity of its customers, says it sells its products only to "vetted and legitimate" government entities.

QuaDream did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition to the sixofficialsand advisers who told Reuters they weretargeted, a director at a state-ownedIndonesianfirm that provides weapons to theIndonesianarmy got the same message from Apple, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The people asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. The company director did not respond to requests for comment.

Within weeks of Apple's notification in Novemberlastyear, the U.S. government addedNSO to the Department of Commerce's 'entity list,' which makes it harder for U.S. companies to do business with it, after determining that the firm's phone-hacking technology had been used by foreign governments to "maliciously target" political dissidents around the world.

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