For iPhone customers in India, Apple has issued a warning about encountering a ‘mercenary spyware attack’ associated with Pegasus targeting their device and attempting to take over remotely.

There are 98 countries which received the warning from Apple regarding the possibility of mercenary malware attacks with a fresh set of threat notifications.

The latest warning comes as the second one this year to users across 92 countries.

Since 2021, Apple has been engaged in sending these alerts to users in over 150 countries.

The tech giant stated that the attacks target iPhone users’ devices by causing a loss of millions of dollars and are individually deployed against a very small number of people.

The latest alert comes as the targeting is ongoing and global.

On the other hand, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) found numerous vulnerabilities in Apple's operating system for the iPhone and iPad especially in the company's main products like the Safari web browser.

Apple emphasized in its notification to affected consumers the confidential nature of its threat identification techniques and issued a warning that disclosing further information would help attackers avoid discovery in the future.

Since last year, Apple has also changed the terminology it uses to refer to these occurrences. Rather than using the term "state-sponsored" attacks, it now refers to them as "mercenary spyware attacks."

Then, the government's leading cybersecurity organization stated that vulnerabilities in the iPadOS and Safari web browsers prior to version 17.4.1 may let attackers "execute arbitrary code" on the devices they were targeting.

A similar alert alerting consumers of a "state-sponsored" attack on their devices was delivered by Apple to subscribers in other countries, including India, in October 2023. However, the US-based business had not identified the specific state actor responsible for the assaults.