‘Apple warnings issue being probed professionally’
Mint. On 31 October, several individuals, including Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Aam Aadmi Party politician Raghav Chadha, were sent a threat notification by Apple that suggested government hackers had attempted to hack their iPhones.
Shortly after the security notifications were reported about, Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, the Centre ordered a probe into the matter, and that the issue was being handled by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In). Earlier on Wednesday, a report by the Post claimed, citing unnamed sources, that government officials “pressed (an) Apple official to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings to users," adding further that the government-affiliated officials in this matter “were really angry." “…the intensity of the Indian government’s effort to discredit and strong-arm Apple disturbed executives at the company’s headquarters, in Cupertino, California, and illustrated how even Silicon Valley’s most powerful tech companies can face pressure from the increasingly assertive leadership of the world’s most populous country—and one of the most critical technology markets of the coming decade," the Post report said.
Responding to the report, Chandrasekhar said that Cert-In is engaged in the investigation, and that the involved parties have so far met two batches of Apple executives as part of the probe. “To be very clear, what (the Post report) has characterized as strong-arming—nobody here has had any conversation like that.
Our approach has been extremely professional and transparent—we put out what we expect of them in the public domain, and that is what they are answering," he said. An email sent to Apple late on
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