New Delhi: Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said that the 'technically qualified' agency Certin, which has collaborations with major technical experts worldwide, will probe the matter pertaining to the alert notifications sent to many people by Apple.

Help will be sought from law enforcement agencies to investigate the issue.

The minister urged members of parliament who have received the advisory to cooperate with the investigation to ensure a thorough inquiry.

Vaishnaw's statement followed remarks from Opposition MPs, including TMC's Mahua Moitra, Shiv Sena's Priyanka Chaturvedi, Congress' Pawan Khera, Shashi Tharoor, AAP's Raghav Chadha, and CPIM's Sitaram Yechury, who stated that they had been notified by Apple about potential targeting by state-sponsored attackers.

Vaishnaw explained that Apple's advisory is based on their own assessments. Additionally, Apple has affirmed that its encryption system is of the highest caliber and clarified that such advisories have been issued in 150 countries.

Apple’s response

Apple does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker. State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time.

Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete. It's possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected. We are unable to provide information about what causes us to issue threat notifications, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behavior to evade detection in the future.