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Apple's new iPhone security directly challenges ICE surveillance tech [1]

['Ellsworth Toohey']

Date: 2025-09-17

Apple announced new anti-spyware security features for its iPhone 17, just as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prepares to deploy powerful new spyware to spy on people.

ICE has reactivated a $2 million contract with Israeli company Paragon Solutions for it Graphite spyware tool, which can covertly access and control data on smartphones, including messages sent through encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp.

Apple's new Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) system, built into the latest iPhones, is made to block the exact kind of attacks that ICE's spyware is designed to carry out. MIE uses advanced software and custom-designed chips to detect and prevent attempts to exploit the phone's memory – a common tactic used by sophisticated hacking tools.

From Apple's announcement:

Based on our evaluations pitting Memory Integrity Enforcement against exceptionally sophisticated mercenary spyware attacks from the last three years, we believe MIE will make exploit chains significantly more expensive and difficult to develop and maintain, disrupt many of the most effective exploitation techniques from the last 25 years, and completely redefine the landscape of memory safety for Apple products. Because of how dramatically it reduces an attacker's ability to exploit memory corruption vulnerabilities on our devices, we believe Memory Integrity Enforcement represents the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems.

Previously:

• Apple sends threat alerts as sophisticated spyware targets high-profile iPhone users

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/09/17/apples-new-iphone-security-directly-challenges-ice-surveillance-tech.html

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