Apple notifies users in almost a hundred countries of the existence of mercenary spy software

April 11 (Portaltic/EP) –

Users from nearly a hundred countries have received notifications from the team Manzana in which they are alerted to the existence of mercenary spy software on their devices and are invited to take some measures to protect their equipment.

Since 2021, the firm has sent threat notifications to brand terminals several times a year as it detects mercenary spy attacks and, to date, has seen users in more than 150 countries in total.

This is how he explains it on their support pagewhere he has clarified that the cost, sophistication and nature of attacks of this type of this malicious 'software' make it one of the “most advanced” digital threats that exist today.

As collected now TechCrunch, The technology company has sent a notification to iPhone users in 92 countries warning them that they could have been the target of mercenary spyware attacks, without providing more details about this campaign.

“Apple detected that you are being the target of a software attack mercenary spy trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID,” is the message that those from Cupertino have shared with the owners of these devices.

If the company detects activity related to this threat, it notifies target users in two ways. First send the aforementioned notification after the user has logged in 'appleid.apple.com'. Then, send an email and iMessage notification to the addresses and phone numbers associated with the user's Apple ID.

With these alerts, it offers the different additional steps that users can take to help protect their devices from these “exceptionally well-funded” attacks that “evolve over time“, including enabling the so-called activation lock mode.

Other security measures include updating devices with the latest software, protecting them with a password, implementing a two-factor authentication (2MFA, for its acronym in English).

On this occasion, Apple has not specified why it has sent these notifications to its users because “this can help mercenary spyware attackers adapt their behavior.” to evade detection in the future.

It is worth mentioning that the firm previously referred to these attacks as “state-sponsored”, something it has changed on its support website, where it has also insisted that they are distributed mainly against journalists, activists, politicians and diplomats, and in that are “continuous and global.”