Apple says the iPhone 17 comes with a massive security upgrade

The article discusses a major security upgrade in the new iPhone 17 series, called Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE). MIE is described as the "most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems," explicitly targeting the spyware industry and tools like Pegasus. The upgrade is built on Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE) and includes secure typed allocators and tag confidentiality protections. Apple claims the implementation goes further than previous efforts, protecting all users by default and designing the A19 and A19 Pro chips for enhanced security. The company also says the new mitigation for Spectre V1 leaks has "virtually zero CPU cost." The article notes that the security-focused GrapheneOS project acknowledged the "major security improvements" but had issues with how the presentation portrayed iOS security compared to features like MTE, already released for Android. The article emphasizes that the changes are aimed at making "mercenary spyware" more expensive to develop, as the industry continues to evolve to address memory-related vulnerabilities.