Apple warns about mercenary spy software targeting users in 100 countries

Users from nearly a hundred countries have received notifications from the team Apple in which the existence of a ‘software‘ mercenary spy on your devices and you are invited to take some measures to protect your computers.

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 explained on its support page, where it 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. .

According to 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. “You are being the target of a mercenary spyware attack that attempts 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 to ‘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, offers different additional steps that users can take to help protect their devices from these attacks “exceptionally well-funded” that “evolve over time,” including enabling 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) system.

On this occasion, Apple has not specified why it has sent these notifications to its users because “this may 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.”