Apple and Google issue cyber threat warning

Apple and Google have sent a new round of cyber threat alerts to users around the world, the companies said this week, announcing their latest effort to insulate customers from surveillance threats.

Apple and Alphabet-owned Google are two of several tech companies that regularly issue warnings to users when they find they may have been targeted by state-sponsored hackers.

Apple said the warnings were issued on December 2, but provided few more details about the alleged hacking activity and did not answer questions about the number of users targeted or say who is believed to have conducted the surveillance.

Apple said that “to date we have notified users in more than 150 countries in total.”

Apple’s statement follows Google’s Dec. 3 announcement that it was warning all known users being targeted using Intellexa spyware, which it said covered “several hundred accounts in various countries, including Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Angola, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Tajikistan.”

Google said in its statement that Intellexa, a cyber intelligence company under US government sanctions, is “dodging restrictions and thriving.”

Executives connected to Intellexa did not immediately return messages. Previous waves of warnings have grabbed headlines and prompted investigations by government agencies, including the European Union, whose senior officials have previously been targeted using spyware.

Threat alerts impose costs on cyber spies by alerting victims, said John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the Canadian digital surveillance group Citizen Lab. He said it was “also often the first step in a series of investigations and discoveries that can lead to real accountability regarding spyware abuses.”