The German government has issued a warning to politicians and public figures regarding potential targeting by government-sponsored spyware, shortly after Apple began notifying victims that their iPhones may have been compromised. Germany’s federal cybersecurity agency, known as the BSI, stated in a communication over the weekend that it had identified instances where members of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, along with other prominent individuals, received alerts from Apple indicating they might have been subjected to cyberattacks.
According to hinews, German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius emphasized that the authorities in Berlin are “taking the incident and the warning very seriously,” although he did not disclose the identities of those in the federal government who had been targeted, including whether German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was among them.
Apple routinely issues so-called threat notifications to individuals it believes may have been targeted by spyware capable of extracting messages, location data, and other sensitive information from their devices. This type of spyware frequently employs zero-click exploits, allowing it to infiltrate devices almost undetected, as it does not require the victim to click on a link or open a file.
Apple refrains from attributing these attacks to specific governments or confirming whether an individual’s phone has indeed been compromised. Consequently, the BSI advised that anyone receiving an Apple threat notification “should therefore assume that their device may have been compromised.”
Individuals outside of Germany have also received the recent threat alerts from Apple. Radwan Mortada, a filmmaker based in Beirut, shared on X that he received a new threat notification indicating that Apple had detected “another attack against your device,” following a previous spyware incident that targeted him in 2021.
The origins of this latest wave of spyware attacks remain unclear, as does the identity of the government potentially responsible for the targeting. According to the notification received by Mortada, Apple indicated that its latest series of threat notifications was distributed to users across 99 countries.
This situation underscores the opaque nature of the increasing number of attacks directed at members of civil society. Governments seldom develop these tools independently; rather, many procure them from private vendors, often referred to as “mercenary spyware” manufacturers, with Israel’s NSO Group being the most prominent, known for its controversial Pegasus spyware. Reports suggest that Germany’s own central federal law enforcement agency, the BKA, acquired access to Pegasus in 2019.
