Almost four years after rolling out its advanced security feature, Lockdown Mode, Apple says it has not documented any instance of a device being successfully compromised while the setting was enabled.

The company introduced Lockdown Mode as an optional, high-security safeguard aimed at protecting users from sophisticated cyber threats, including spyware and targeted surveillance.

“We are not aware of any successful mercenary spyware attacks against a Lockdown Mode-enabled Apple device,” Apple spokesperson Sarah O’Rourke told TechCrunch on Friday.

The statement marks the tech giant’s latest reaffirmation that Apple devices operating with Lockdown Mode are capable of resisting government-grade spyware attacks, a claim it first made one year after the feature was introduced.

The Lockdown Mode feature limits certain device functions to minimise potential vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit.

The head of the security lab at Amnesty International, Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, said his team has found no confirmed cases of a successful spyware breach on an iPhone with Lockdown Mode activated.

Ó Cearbhaill, who has led investigations into dozens of mercenary spyware incidents, said he and his colleagues “have not seen any evidence of an iPhone being successfully compromised by mercenary spyware where Lockdown Mode was enabled at the time of the attack.”

Digital rights groups including Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto have documented multiple successful spyware attacks targeting iPhone users, but none have reported a case in which Lockdown Mode was bypassed.

In at least two publicly disclosed incidents, Citizen Lab researchers said they observed Lockdown Mode actively blocking spyware attempts — one involving NSO Group’s Pegasus and another using Predator spyware developed by a firm now part of Intellexa.