Right before the elections, the U.S. vice president of the cybersecurity team and presidential candidate Kamala Harris reached out to Apple asking for help. According to the report Forbes, this tool is designed to detect spyware on iPhones and flag the anomalies on the two devices that belong to the campaign staff. Apple also declined to forensically analyzation of the phone.
The company’s response is not surprising to the digital defenders who are working with at-risk populations after being targeted by the spyware. In the last few years, Apple has been sending notifications to targets and victims of government spyware. This also opens the risk of hacking and directing them to get help.
Crucially Apple doesn’t tell to target and get in touch with its own security engineers. Apple doesn’t tell to target of government spyware and share their opinion.
“Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple Account,”
“This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously.”
Hence it may look like Apple is abdicating its responsibility to protect the users, cybersecurity experts who work with human rights defenders, and journalists. Apple’s approach to altering the victims of spyware attacks is the right one. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab said
“These notifications have been a game changer for spyware accountability research,”
Scott-Railton also said
“When I look back over the past few years, I see so many of the most important cases that we know about — Poland, Thailand, so many others — began with an Apple notification,”
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