PHONES OF MPS AND STATE OFFICIALS NO LONGER SAFE

BERLIN, NOVEMBER 2 /SRNA/ - The phones of lawmakers and officials in Germany are no longer secure, and they should assume as much if they have received a warning from US company "Apple", the German administration said.

The Federal Office for Information Security issued an urgent notice advising civil servants that if they have received a notification from "Apple" in the past few days, they should assume their device is no longer secure.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's spokesman Steffen Kornelius said the federal authorities are taking the incident very seriously, but declined to say whether Merz is among those with compromised devices.

People affected by the malicious software began receiving notifications from "Apple" at the end of last week, the "Financial Times" reported.

The British daily says the hackers are exploiting a so-called zero-click vulnerability, meaning the phones are infected even though their owners did nothing, such as clicking a malicious link or opening a compromised file.

The hackers only need to know the target's phone number to carry out the attack.

There is no information yet on who might be responsible for the hacking, but security officials believe a state is behind it.