Germany warns MPs their iPhones may have been hacked with spyware: Apple sent warnings in 99 countries, and nobody knows who is behind the attacks

Germany's federal cybersecurity agency, BSI, announced over the weekend that members of the Bundestag and other, unnamed prominent figures had received warnings from Apple that their phones may have been targeted in an attack. A few days earlier, Apple had started sending notifications to people it believes were attacked with spyware.

Government spokesman Stefan Kornelius said Berlin takes "the incident and the warning very seriously", but didn't say who in the federal government had been targeted. Nor whether Chancellor Friedrich Merz was among them. Does Berlin not know, or does it not want to say?

Spyware like this can steal messages, location and other sensitive data from a phone, and often uses attacks in which the victim doesn't have to click a link or open a file. The phone gets broken into almost invisibly. Apple doesn't say which government is behind the attacks, nor does it confirm whether any phone was actually compromised. That's why the BSI tells everyone who got such a notification "to assume that their device may have been compromised".

Germany isn't alone. Beirut filmmaker Radwan Mortada, already targeted with spyware in 2021, posted on X that he had received a new notification about "another attack on your device". According to that notification, the latest wave of Apple warnings went to users in 99 countries. Who is behind this round of attacks and which government ordered it is not yet known.

This is where the story gets awkward for Berlin. Governments rarely build these tools themselves - they buy them from private firms that the industry calls spyware "mercenaries". The best known is Israel's NSO Group, which sells the controversial Pegasus. And Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, the BKA, according to published reports, bought access to Pegasus as early as 2019. The state now counting its MPs' hacked phones has done its own shopping in that market.

The Balkans know stories of wiretapped politicians by heart, and this is a reminder that a politician's phone has long been the front line. If a German MP's phone can be broken into, how safe is the phone of any minister in the region?