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It's a story that originated with RT, but I haven't seen it covered in Western publications. (I've linked to an Indian one--Republicworld.)

According to Russia's state-controlled television network RT, Apple Maps was hacked to rename the Russian MoD as ‘Ministry of Fascism’ on Friday. [...]

The source of the apparent viral defacing is currently unknown, as per RT.

So, is this this claim true? Was Apple Maps hacked to show "Ministry of Fascism" in place of the Russian Ministry of Defense?

There's a website (oopstop.com), which seemingly citing or translating from URA.ru says:

Roskomnadzor sent a letter to Apple with a request to correct the incorrect name of the Russian Ministry of Defense in the Apple Maps mapping service. In other countries, the department on the maps is designated as the “Ministry of Fascism of the Russian Federation.”

URA.ru appears to be some lesser-know "Urals" news agency (it has a page in Russian Wikipedia, but not in the English one.)

I tried to search rt.com itself for a confirmation of the story, but that's rather difficult from the EU at the moment.

Someone pointed out in a comment below that you can have user annotations like these on Apple Maps:

enter image description here

The annotated interest points have an icon that's pretty different from the built-in interest points. But the screenshots that were posted with the (first) story show the "fascism" one having rather similar icon, like the seemingly built-in ones:

enter image description here

enter image description here

Now, it's possible that the web and app version on Apple Maps differ significantly in their UI and icons, but it's not all that obvious from the appearance/screenshots that the latter maps (that went with story) are just user annotations.

Fizz
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  • Can users suggest changes? I guess similar happend on Google Maps. – Bernhard Döbler Mar 06 '22 at 00:34
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    Given business names can be user-submitted, I wonder if "hacked" is too strong a word. Can we change it to "tricked"? – Oddthinking Mar 06 '22 at 01:17
  • @Oddthinking: well, then it's not really "hacked", but this is the term used in the source. I've added a quote from the Indian source. Twitter currently blocks RT at my location (EU), so I can't quote them directly. Can't access them over the web either. It seems their certificates were revoked. – Fizz Mar 06 '22 at 06:01
  • @Fizz: Then I suspect the answer is going to be as much about the definition of words than the facts of the case, – Oddthinking Mar 06 '22 at 21:56
  • @Oddthinking: interesting, but that article is about Apple marking Crimea as part of Ukraine now (instead of the ambiguity it had before). That article says nothing whatsoever about this "ministry of fascism" issue/prank/hack. – Fizz Mar 07 '22 at 06:01
  • @Fizz: Dammit. That is the second time I have made a similar mistake this week. Deleted my irrelevant comment. Thank you for the correction. – Oddthinking Mar 07 '22 at 08:27
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    Note: Turns out, you can [modify the URL](https://maps.apple.com/place?ll=55.727811%2C37.589635&q=Cocomac+Is+Awesome) to get Apple Maps to name it whatever you want, so any screenshots could trivially be faked. Given that I haven't found any reputable news sources covering it, all the screenshots totally could have been faked (not saying they were - just that it's possible) – cocomac Mar 08 '22 at 05:45
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    @cocomac What's presented on the screen is just the output from a browser, and the browser is interpreting HTML, so all you need for a screenshot is to write an HTML file that gives the wanted output. – Acccumulation Mar 08 '22 at 19:02
  • So "hacking" my own Mac to display this map like this wouldn't be too difficult, while hacking Apple's servers to make this change would be (or at least should be) very hard, and hacking the internet in Russia so that the phones of Russian "Maps" users display this would be very, very hard. – gnasher729 Mar 09 '22 at 18:05

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