According to Reuters html on the 230th, nine sources revealed that more than a dozen senior Indonesian government and military officials were attacked by spyware developed by an Israeli company last year. Six of them told Reuters that they were the target of attack.
Sources said the targets of the attack include Minister of Economic Coordination Airlangga Hartarto, senior military officials, two diplomats and advisers to Indonesia's Ministry of Defense and Foreign Affairs.
6 Indonesian officials and consultants who were listed as targets told Reuters that they received an email from Apple in November 2021, which said that Apple believes the officials are becoming "targets of state-backed spyware." But Apple has not disclosed the identity or number of attacked users.
Apple and security researchers said the people who received the warning were attacked by a software called Forced Entry. Israel's NSO Group has been using the software to help its customers, foreign spy agencies, remotely secretly control Apple phones. Reuters said it is not yet possible to determine who used the spyware to monitor the Indonesian officials, whether the attacks were successful and what the hackers might acquire if they were successful.
Reuters report screenshot
Cybersecurity experts said the incident is one of the largest cases of using spyware to date for Indonesian government, military and defense personnel.
A spokesman for the Israel NSO group denied in response that the company's software developed was involved in an attack on Indonesian officials, saying it was "contractually and technically impossible", but did not explain the reason. The company did not disclose the identity of its customers, but said its products were sold only to "reviewed and verified" government entities.
Reuters mentioned that the "Citizen Laboratory" of the Monk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Canada, released the operating mode of the "forced portal" software in September 2021. This technology can exploit vulnerabilities in Apple phones through a new hacking technology that does not require user interaction. Google security researchers said in a blog post last December that it was the "technologically advanced" hack they've ever seen.
Last September, Apple patched the vulnerability and began sending notification messages to what it calls "a small number of users who may be attacked."
In the weeks after Apple issued the above notice in November last year, the U.S. Department of Commerce included the Israeli NSO group on the list of entities that "engage in violation of U.S. national security activities", which made it more difficult for U.S. companies to do business with the company. Previously, the US government determined that some foreign governments had used the company's mobile phone surveillance technology to "maliciously attack" targets around the world.
Last year, the " Pegasus " spyware of Israel's NSO Group once made global news headlines. According to previous reports, multiple media and organizations announced the results of a joint investigation, saying that the software developed by the Israeli NSO Group was used to monitor about 50,000 telephone numbers worldwide from 2016 to June this year, and the targets involved heads of governments, senior officials, journalists, etc., including French President Macron , European Council Chairman Michel , Iraq President Barham Saleh, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, and Egyptian Prime Minister Mustafa Madbrey. The NSO Group downplayed the reports and accused the media of touting "false assumptions and unproven theories." The company insists that only selling spyware to state customers for counter-terrorism operations and criminal investigations is not the target of the 50,000 numbers on the list.
(Editor: ZLQ)
