"Absolutely baseless," BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya rubbishes opposition claim of alleged 'hacking' of phones
Oct 31, 2023
New Delhi [India], October 31 : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT Cell chief Amit Malviya on Tuesday refuted the opposition's claim of their phones being hacked by the Centre saying that it is "absolutely baseless."
Multiple political leaders have alleged that their Apple devices have been the victim of alleged hacking. The leaders shared the screenshot of the warning received on their Apple devices.
"Apple has clarified that they have sent several such notifications across the world. Approximately users in 150 counties have received such notifications and they are also not able to point out why such notifications have been triggered. So, for the Opposition to allege that this is being done at the behest of the government is absolutely baseless," Amit Malviya said.
He further targeted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi saying that under the influence of foreign-funded agencies, he keeps raking these issues.
"Rahul Gandhi apparently under the influence of foreign-funded agencies keeps raking these issues but has never cooperated with the investigation. The Opposition does not have any issue to take on the Govt and therefore they are resorting to making these false allegations," he added.
After a major controversy erupted between the ruling party and the opposition leaders over the alleged hacking of their phones, Apple officially announced that it does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.
"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," Apple said in a statement.
The tech giant further said that they are unable to provide information about what causes them to issue threat notifications, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi targeted the Modi government over the "Apple warning message" received by Congress and some other opposition leaders and said it was trying to divert the attention of people from real issues.
Referring to hacking allegations of opposition MPs and alerts on their devices from Apple, the Congress leader said a number of people in his office have got this message.
"KC Venugopal, Supriya, Pawan Khera, Sitaram Yechury, Akhilesh Yadav, and Priyanka Chaturvedi have got it too. They (BJP) are trying to distract the attention of the youth," Rahul Gandhi said.
Earlier in the day, several opposition leaders of different political parties including Shashi Tharoor, Raghav Chadha, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Asaduddin Owaisi and others alleged that their Apple devices have been the victim of alleged hacking.
The leaders shared the purported screenshots of the warning received on their Apple devices.
