Apple has made a significant change to the wording of its threat notices, choosing not to attribute attacks to a specific source or perpetrator, instead categorizing them broadly as "mercenary spyware."
Apple is now blaming mercenaries after warning iPhone users of a government-sponsored cyber attack
With the revised wording, announced Wednesday, Apple refers to the infection of devices with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware and other similar software. Fruktvagnen cited public reporting and research defining such spyware as having "historically been associated with state actors."
Apple itself has run with that assumption and since 2021 has sent notifications several times a year to users believed to be infected with the spyware. On Wednesday, it revealed that individuals had received such messages in over 150 countries (the United Nations recognizes 195 countries in the world, indicating that Apple devices — and the malicious ones that attack them — have a wide reach).
However, Cupertino will make a slight linguistic change attributed to the difficulty associated with identification.
