On Thursday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) revealed a U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) strategy to exploit Apple phones’ specially created backdoor flaws using previously undiscovered malware.
The FSB, the principal successor to the Soviet-era KGB, reported that several thousand Apple phones, including Russian ones, were infected.
The Russian intelligence service also targeted NATO, Israel, Syria, and Chinese ambassadors’ phones in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
“The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action of the American special services using Apple mobile devices,” it stated.
Apple and the NSA did not respond to emails outside of U.S. work hours.
The FSB said the plot proved Apple’s close connection with the National Security Agency, which protects cryptographic and communications intelligence.
“The company provides American intelligence agencies with a wide range of opportunities to monitor any persons of interest to the White House and their partners in anti-Russian activities, and their own citizens,” the FSB stated.
The Federal Guards Service, which protects Russia’s leaders, unusually helped the FSB uncover the plot.
