• Source:JND
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iPhone 17 Series: Apple’s new iPhone 17 lineup and the first-ever iPhone Air have drawn attention for their sleek designs, fresh colour options, and upgraded cameras. But beyond the aesthetics and performance, Apple has introduced a security change that could reshape how iPhones defend against advanced spyware attacks.

Memory Integrity Enforcement debuts

In a September 9 blog post, Apple revealed that its A19 and A19 Pro chips, paired with updates to iOS and development tools, now include a new defence called Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE).

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MIE is designed to spot and neutralise memory-based security exploits, making it far more difficult for spyware tools such as NSO Group’s Pegasus to compromise devices. Apple describes it as the industry’s first always-on, system-wide memory-safety protection, extending coverage to the kernel and more than 70 userland processes.

Built on the Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE)—a modified version of an Arm technology—MIE detects and mitigates memory corruption bugs at the hardware level.

According to Apple: “Because of how dramatically it reduces an attacker’s ability to exploit memory corruption vulnerabilities on our devices, we believe [MIE] represents the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems.”

Rollout across iPhone 17 and iPhone Air

Apple confirmed that MIE will be integrated into all iPhone 17 and iPhone Air models, offering a baseline of protection without requiring user activation. The move follows Apple’s routine spyware threat alerts, which notify users when their iPhones may be targeted.

In July, Apple warned several Iranian users about government spyware attacks. Similar alerts triggered political controversy in India two years ago, when leaders including Shashi Tharoor and Mahua Moitra said they had received Apple’s state-sponsored threat notifications.

The security community reacts

While researchers have welcomed the upgrade, some have noted that Apple is not the first to deploy such protections. Android devices like the Google Pixel 8 shipped with MTE years earlier.

The team behind Graphene OS, a security-focused mobile operating system, cautioned that Apple’s framing of the feature might be overstated, and in a post on X(Twitter) they wrote: “It’s not as if Apple’s integration of features like PAC and MTE is going to be perfect with no caveats. MTE provides 4-bit tags, providing a relatively high probability of detecting exploits. It’s not memory safety. It’s the first step towards strong memory tagging. There’s around a 1/15 chance to bypass it for each part of an exploit it impacts without having any side channels.”

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A step forward, but not flawless

Security experts agree that MIE represents a major leap in consumer device protection, even if it’s not an absolute shield. Apple’s adoption of EMTE may set a new standard in mainstream smartphones, pushing memory-safety technology further into the spotlight.