Apple Confirms Memory Security Feature Arriving With iPhone 17

Apple is introducing a new memory security feature across the iPhone 17 series. While the feature wasn’t touched on much during its latest keynote, it is said to be “the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems.”

Apple’s new Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) will be arriving alongside the iPhone 17 family. According to the company, the MIE system targets spyware products such as Pegasus that hack targeted devices. MIE provides always-on memory-safety protection for devices, covering the kernel process. Apple has built the system on the Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE).

“With the introduction of the iPhone 17 lineup and iPhone Air, we’re excited to deliver Memory Integrity Enforcement: the industry’s first ever, comprehensive, always-on memory-safety protection covering key attack surfaces — including the kernel and over 70 userland processes — built on the Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE) and supported by secure typed allocators and tag confidentiality protections.”

The latest security feature will be powered by Apple’s new A19 and A19 Pro chipsets. Available on iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, the new chips were designed with enhanced security in mind. Unfortunately, this means that older hardware won’t be able to support the new memory tagging features on iPhone 17.

The latest security measures are confirmed to include protection for Spectre V1 attacks. Apple states MIE works with “virtually zero CPU cost.” With its new measures, the company predicts that “mercenary spyware” will be significantly more expensive to produce, posing an impact on other exploitative software.

Apple is also confirmed to be making EMTE available to all Apple developers across Xcode as part of the new Enhanced Security feature that was released during WWDC this year.