AI had been deployed to analyze vast troves of data obtained by foreign intelligence, the agency has said

Western intelligence agencies hacked the phones of Russian officials and other people with access to sensitive information, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has said.

Devices belonging to Russian diplomats, politicians, high-ranking officers and journalists were allegedly compromised, allowing foreign spies to record everything around them and collect vast amounts of data, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday.

The access to the gadgets had been obtained through a so-called zero-day vulnerability, a security hole in software unknown to its developers, according to the FSB.

The sheer volume of information gathered by Western spy agencies would have been impossible for humans to process just a few years ago, but AI is now being used to analyze it within minutes, the agency stressed.

According to the FSB, the investigation began in 2023 after experts at Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab detected unusual network activity on employees' Apple devices.

The US has been developing its cyber-espionage infrastructure for decades, particularly since the adoption of the Patriot Act in 2001. Introduced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the legislation gave American intelligence agencies broad powers to demand information from IT companies in the name of national security.

Washington's surveillance activities have not been limited to rival nations. In 2013, the US was caught spying on then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

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(RT.com)