According to the Russian intelligence services, telephones of the American brand would have been used to spy on officials, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
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Thousands of Russian officials forced to drop their iPhone or iPad. As of Monday, July 17, employees of certain ministries and state enterprises no longer have the right to use American Apple brand devices for professional purposes. According to the official TASS agency, this decision follows an alert dated July 13 from the FSB, the Russian intelligence services. They would have discovered a “American spy campaign” on the “thousands of devices”.
This ban took effect on Monday at the Russian Ministry of Commerce, as well as at the Ministry of Digital Development and within Rostec, the public company in charge of civil and military high technologies. As reported by the FinancialTimes, all Apple devices are affected by this measure, from phones to connected watches. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has also been pushing companies in “critical sectors” to turn to technological solutions developed in Russia, rather than American or European systems, for example.
In this case, the FSB claims to have detected viruses in thousands of devices, sometimes within embassies. The Russian secret service even accuses the company Apple, based in California, of “working closely” with the NSA, the American agency in charge of intelligence and digital security.