CIA, Western agencies snooping via Apple devices, warns Russian official

The speaker of the upper chamber of Russian parliament, Valentina Matvienko, has suggested that officials should never use Apple devices at work due to the threat of surveillance by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other Western spy networks. 

Matvienko said during a session on Tuesday that the devices were a risk in terms of national and personal security.

“It’s clear why people are ditching iPhones. At the very least, they certainly cannot be used for work purposes, because our non-partners [Western nations] are snooping after the entire world,” she said 

Matvienko noted that she and other Russian senators were not banned from bringing Apple devices into parliament because “it would not matter, since we mostly conduct public hearings.”

“But when we hold sessions behind closed doors, where a certain level of secrecy is required, no phones at all are allowed, not just iPhones,” she added.

Some Russian agencies have previously expressed concern about Apple’s popularity and the potential for the firm to give backdoor access to its devices to the US intelligence community.

Last month, the security service FSB accused the CIA of infecting thousands of iPhones with malware to spy on users. The targets included Russian and foreign diplomats, it said. 

The agency claimed that Apple was “providing the American intelligence services with a wide range of opportunities to survey any persons of interest to the White House.”

Several thousand phones made by Apple were infected with the malware, according to the FSB.

The FSB said that in addition to impacting domestic users, the malware also targeted foreign numbers and wireless subscribers who use SIM cards registered with diplomatic missions and embassies in Russia.

The discovery is more proof of the close cooperation between Apple and the US intelligence community, the FSB said, adding that “the declared policy of ensuring the privacy of personal data of Apple users has nothing to do with reality.”

The FSB also accused Apple of “providing the American intelligence services with a wide range of opportunities to survey any persons of interest to the White House, including their partners in anti-Russian activities, as well as their own citizens.”

According to multiple media reports, a number of firms around the world offer clients services in breaching iPhone defenses to extract information or conduct surveillance. 

In some cases, most notably with the Israeli spy kit Pegasus, developers were accused of exposing people’s phones to some leaders who would then go after their political opponents, foreign officials, and journalists.

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Smartphones infected with Pegasus can be turned into a listening device. In addition, the spyware allows the user to read the target's messages, access their photos, track their location, and even turn on their camera without their knowledge.

In recent months, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched a campaign on social media platforms to recruit Russian nationals disaffected by the military operation in Ukraine as spies and agents.

The Washington Post earlier reported that the CIA was attempting to recruit employees of the Russian embassy in Washington by means of sending social media ads to smartphones. 

In November last year, a report by the Wall Street Journal revealed that the US spy agency has been seeking to recruit Russian nationals frustrated with the course of war in Ukraine.

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