Researchers say the group planted malicious code on legitimate sites and a Ukrainian analytics service, then used known vulnerabilities to pull data from vulnerable phones.
Sekoia attributes a large-scale watering hole operation to APT29 with moderate-to-high confidence. The payloads chained already-patched browser and OS flaws, and none of them established persistence.
Germany's BSI sent a letter to officials and public figures who got Apple's threat notifications, saying they should assume their devices are infected. Apple said the targets were in 99 countries.