par Sonia Romero
posted on Monday July 17th, 2023 at 7:08 PM •
5 min read
Russian security services are cracking down further on the Apple brand after they allegedly uncovered a spying operation involving Apple on behalf of Washington.
In the news : Moscow thinks it has found in Apple the equivalent of Huawei for the Americans. The Russian security services (FSB) have since Monday banned all devices of the American brand to government officials, i.e. several thousand people, announces the Financial Times.
The Ministry of Commerce has thus announced a total ban on the use of iPhones for professional purposes. The Department of Digital Development and Rostec, a state-owned company sanctioned by the West for its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, also said they would introduce similar bans, or even had them in place already. In question: they claim that Apple would have provided the NSA (United States National Security Agency) a “backdoor” for its devices, allowing US security services to spy on Russian officials and their sensitive conversations. The ban follows a June 1 announcement, when the FSB claimed to have uncovered a “spy operation by US intelligence agencies using Apple devices.” According to the FSB, a significant number of iPhones, equipped with Russian SIM cards or registered with Moscow’s diplomatic missions in NATO countries, as well as in Israel, Syria and China, were affected by monitoring software. For Moscow, this discovery raises concerns about an alleged close collaboration between Apple and the United States National Security Agency. On his side, Apple has denied these allegations., stating “never have worked with a government to create a backdoor in an Apple product”, and that the company “never would”. To which Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and former Russian president, countered: “When a big technology company says it is not cooperating with the intelligence community, either she’s lying outright or she’s about to go bankrupt“. An unassailable argument and an implacable logic, we can say it…
The detail “The authorities really believe that the Americans can use their equipment for wiretapping”, explains to the FT Andrey Soldatov, Russian security and intelligence services expert.
“Security services have long been concerned about the use of iPhones for business contacts, but the Presidential Administration and other officials have opposed the restrictions simply because they like iPhones,” it added. he. And with very strict control at the key : according to a senior official of the Ministry of Commerce, “specialists in the IT department report when someone opens their work email from an iPhone. It’s easy to control“. Note that the use of Apple devices for personal purposes remains authorized. For now.
2024 Russian presidential election
The context : This is not the first time that Moscow has expressed reservations about the Cupertino company.
Russian security services had already banned the use of iPhones by officials since last March. iPads and Macs are now also targeted. This first measure applied “to all civil servants in the country who are involved in the preparations for the 2024 Russian presidential election“. In the end, it is also a ready-made excuse to carry out Vladimir Putin’s wishes and force organizations involved in “critical information infrastructures” to switch to software developed in Russia by 2025, as he said a month after the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Moscow is therefore continuing its efforts to force public institutions to turn away from foreign technologies, while the Kremlin seizes the assets of Western companies in Russia, such as Danone and Carlsberg. But if civil servants can no longer use iPhones, shouldn’t ministers be the same? We remember these images from last year of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov. The latter denied the insinuations about his poor state of health, from a hotel in Bali, wearing a t-shirt bearing the image of Basquiat but also an Apple Watch, all with an iPhone placed on the table.
2023-07-17 17:08:07
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