Apple on Wednesday notified some iPhone users in India that their device was a possible target of a Pegasus-like “mercenary spyware attack” that was trying to gain remote control of their device.

This is the second such notification that the company has sent to users in India and 98 other countries across the world, according to people aware of the development.

Since 2021, Apple has sent these notifications to users in more than 150 countries.

“Mercenary spyware attacks, such as those using Pegasus from the NSO Group, are exceptionally rare and vastly more sophisticated than regular cybercriminal activity or consumer malware,” Apple said in the threat notification mail.

ET has seen a copy of it.

In its latest threat notification, Apple also informed the targeted iPhone users that attacks such as those mounted on their devices “cost millions of dollars and are individually deployed against a very small number of people, but the targeting is ongoing and global”.

Apple and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) did not respond to mails seeking response on the latest round of notifications till the time of publication.

In April this year, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) had flagged multiple vulnerabilities in Apple’s operating system for iPhone and iPad, especially for its flagship offerings such as the Safari web browser.

The government’s nodal cybersecurity agency had then said that flaws in Safari web browser versions before version 17.4.1 iOS and iPadOS versions before version 17.4.1 could allow attackers to “execute arbitrary code” on targeted devices.

In October 2023, Apple had sent a similar notification to users in several countries including India warning them of a “state-sponsored” attack on their devices. The US-based company had, however, not specified which state actor was behind the attacks.