©Yekaterina Shtukina/POOL/TASS
The deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has advised the owners of any smartphones not to believe that their manufacturers can afford to refuse to cooperate with the secret services of their countries.
On Thursday, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had uncovered, jointly with the Federal Protective Service (FSO), a US intelligence operation that used a virus program on Apple mobile devices. The company itself responded by claiming it was not cooperating with US intelligence.
"When any, even the largest high-tech company, says it refuses to cooperate with the national intelligence community for ideological reasons, it can mean one of the two things: a) it is shamelessly lying, or b) it is about to go out of business. There are no miracles," Medvedev said in response to journalists' questions about whether he believed Apple's statements. "This should be kept in mind by the owners of any smartphones, whether Apple products with iOS closed to all users, or Samsung with Android open to third-party applications.
Spyware suspicions
According to the FSB, several thousand Apple phones belonging to both Russian subscribers and foreign users "using SIM cards registered to diplomatic missions and embassies in Russia, including NATO and post-Soviet countries, as well as Israel, China and Syria," were infected. The company gives vast opportunities for controlling any persons of interest to the White House, the FSB concluded.
On Thursday, it was reported that Kaspersky Lab had detected a targeted cyberattack being conducted using Apple mobile devices. Several dozen iPhones of the company’s employees were infected with spyware. It was stated that no effective way of removing such software had been devised yet.
Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, while commenting on the situation to the media, stressed that all employees of the Presidential Staff were prohibited from using iPhones for official purposes.
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