Germany says lawmakers’ iPhones may have been hacked with spyware
Germany says lawmakers’ iPhones may have been hacked with spyware
The German government is warning politicians and public figures that they were targeted by government-backed spyware, days after Apple began sending out notifications warning victims that their iPhones may have been hacked. Germany’s federal cybersecurity office, known as the BSI, said in a note over the weekend that it had become aware that members of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and other unnamed notable individuals had received warnings from Apple that they may have been targeted by cyberattacks.
德国政府正在警告政界人士和公众人物，称他们已成为政府支持的间谍软件的目标。此前几天，苹果公司开始向受害者发送通知，警告他们的 iPhone 可能已被入侵。德国联邦网络安全办公室（BSI）在周末的一份说明中表示，他们已获悉德国议会（Bundestag）成员及其他未具名的知名人士收到了苹果公司的警告，称他们可能已成为网络攻击的目标。
Per the Financial Times, German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said the government in Berlin was “taking the incident and the warning very seriously,” but he did not say who in the federal government had been targeted, including whether German chancellor Friedrich Merz was among them. Apple periodically sends out threat notifications to people it thinks may have been targeted by spyware, which can steal messages, location data, and other sensitive information from their phones.
据《金融时报》报道，德国政府发言人斯特凡·科内利乌斯（Stefan Kornelius）表示，柏林政府“非常重视这一事件和警告”，但他并未透露联邦政府中哪些人受到了攻击，包括德国总理弗里德里希·默茨（Friedrich Merz）是否在其中。苹果公司会定期向其认为可能成为间谍软件目标的用户发送威胁通知，这些间谍软件可以窃取手机中的信息、位置数据和其他敏感信息。
This spyware often relies on zero-click exploits, which can hack individuals almost invisibly as they don’t require a victim to click on a link or open a file. Apple does not attribute attacks to specific governments or say whether someone’s phone has actually been compromised. For that reason, the BSI said that anyone who receives an Apple threat notification “should therefore assume that their device may have been compromised.”
这种间谍软件通常依赖“零点击”漏洞，由于不需要受害者点击链接或打开文件，攻击过程几乎是隐形的。苹果公司不会将攻击归咎于特定政府，也不会说明某人的手机是否确实已被入侵。因此，BSI 表示，任何收到苹果威胁通知的人“都应假设其设备可能已被入侵”。
Others outside of Germany also received the recent threat alert from Apple. Radwan Mortada, a Beirut-based filmmaker, said in a post on X that he received a new threat notification warning that Apple had detected “another attack against your device,” after an earlier spyware attack targeted him in 2021. It’s unclear who is behind this latest round of spyware attacks, or which government may have orchestrated the targeting.
德国以外的其他地区也收到了苹果公司最近发出的威胁警报。常驻贝鲁特的电影制作人拉德万·莫尔塔达（Radwan Mortada）在 X 上发帖称，继 2021 年遭遇间谍软件攻击后，他再次收到苹果公司的威胁通知，警告称苹果检测到“针对您设备的另一次攻击”。目前尚不清楚这轮间谍软件攻击的幕后黑手是谁，也不清楚是哪个政府策划了此次攻击。
Per the notice received by Mortada, Apple said its latest batch of threat notifications went out to users in 99 countries. The episode highlights again the murky business behind a growing number of attacks against members of civil society. Governments rarely build these tools themselves. Many buy them from private vendors, often called “mercenary spyware” makers, the best known being Israel’s NSO Group, which sells the controversial Pegasus spyware. Germany’s own central federal law agency, the BKA, reportedly bought access to Pegasus in 2019.
根据莫尔塔达收到的通知，苹果公司表示其最新一批威胁通知已发送至 99 个国家的用户。这一事件再次凸显了针对公民社会成员的攻击日益增多背后的阴暗生意。政府很少自行开发这些工具，许多政府从私人供应商那里购买，这些供应商通常被称为“雇佣兵间谍软件”制造商，其中最著名的是以色列的 NSO 集团，该公司销售备受争议的“飞马”（Pegasus）间谍软件。据报道，德国中央联邦执法机构 BKA 已于 2019 年购买了“飞马”的使用权。