Apple says never worked with NSA for access to iPhone data

Apple Inc said it had never worked with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to provide backdoor access to any of its products, including the iPhone.

Apple issued a statement on Tuesday, following claims by researcher Jacob Appelbaum that NSA gathered data from iPhones, including text messages, contact lists, voicemails and location data.

"We have been unaware of this alleged NSA programme targeting our products," said Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Apple. "We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who's behind them."

Appelbaum, an independent researcher, said at a conference on Monday in Germany an NSA programme called DROPOUTJEEP was tapping into Apple's data. His comments followed a report by German news organisation Der Siegel that detailed the spy agency's ability to access data on smartphones.

The Der Spiegel report said NSA had penetrated products from US technology companies, including Cisco Systems and Dell Cisco, the world's biggest maker of computer-networking equipment, issued a statement on December 29 saying it's "deeply concerned" about the government agency's attempts to exploit technical weaknesses in its products to gather electronic communication data.

"At this time, we do not know of any new product vulnerabilities, and will continue to pursue all avenues to determine if we need to address any new issues," Cisco said on its website. "If we learn of a security weakness in any of our products, we will immediately address it."

Apple, Facebook, Google and Yahoo! were among a group of technology companies that asked President Barack Obama on December 17 to restrain spy programmes exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in June and let them disclose the extent of government prying into their data.