Germany's information-security agency told officials who received Apple threat notifications about mercenary spyware to assume their iPhones were infected and replace them, The Record reported, citing German coverage of the alerts¹.

Der Spiegel reported Monday that some notifications went to federal ministry staff, lawmakers and journalists traveling with Chancellor Friedrich Merz through South Korea, Japan and Singapore, The Record said¹.

Green Party co-leader Franziska Brantner said Tuesday she was among recipients Apple described as located in 99 countries, according to The Record¹.

The BSI sent a warning letter Friday, within a day of Apple's notices, Digital Minister Karsten Wildberg said in a local interview cited by The Record; he said the government had responded quickly¹.

The BSI said it does not know how many devices were actually infected versus only targeted, or why those people were singled out, The Record reported¹.

European Parliament member Hannah Neumann, who previously served on the PEGA spyware inquiry, told The Record several foreign-policy politicians and staffers received Apple notifications this round and that "this has been very different this time"¹.

Neumann said the pattern pointed to political espionage at large scale against Germany's political elite, The Record reported. Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton told The Record the episode showed European governments remain vulnerable to mercenary spyware ahead of a Pall Mall Process meeting in Paris on Nov. 11-12¹.

The Record did not name the spyware vendor or attribute the attacks to a government, and it said many of the German recipients had not come forward publicly¹.