“BJP Trying To Distract Attention…,” Rahul Gandhi On ‘Hacking’ Alert; Apple Says Threat Notifications Not Linked To Any Specific State-Sponsored Attacker

New Delhi [India] : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday targeted the Modi government over the “Apple warning message” received by Congress and some other opposition leaders and said it was trying to divert the attention of people from real issues.

Addressing a press conference here, he also targeted the government over the allegations pertaining to some business deals linked to the Adani group and said the “financial system of BJP is directly linked with him”.

“As soon as Adani is touched, intelligence agencies, CBI, and snooping are used,” the Congress MP said.

Referring to hacking allegations of opposition MPs and alerts on their devices from Apple, the Congress leader said a number of people in his office have got this message.

“KC Venugopal, Supriya, Pawan Khera, Sitaram Yechury, Akhilesh Yadav, and Priyanka Chaturvedi have got it too. They (BJP) are trying to distract the attention of the youth,” Rahul Gandhi said.

The Wayanad MP said that he is not scared and that the government “can do as much tapping of his device as it wants”.

“Very few people are fighting against this but we are not scared. You can do as much (phone) tapping as you want, I don’t care. If you want to take my phone, I will give it to you,” he said..

Apple, an American multi-national company, said it 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,” the company said.

Rahul Gandhi accused the BJP-led government of “distraction politics”.

“On multiple opposition leaders allege ‘hacking’ of their Apple devices, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says “…Earlier, I used to think number 1 is PM Modi, number 2 is Adani and number 3 is Amit Shah, but this wrong, number 1 is Adani, number 2 is PM Modi and number 3 is Amit Shah. We have understood the politics of India and now Adani ji cannot escape. Distraction politics is going on..,” he said.

Asked about ways to remove “Adani Sarkar” from the country, Rahul Gandhi said he has some ideas that cannot be shared publicly.

“This is an interesting problem. I have some ideas. We will show how the Adani Govt can be removed when the time comes. Do not think that Adaniji will be removed by removing the Government. Adaniji is the symbol of the kind of monopolisation currently going on in the country. The financial system of BJP is directly linked with him (Adani),” Rahul Gandhi alleged.

The Congress leader said the BJP will lose in the assembly polls in five states next month.