"The only system-level iOS attacks we observe in the wild come from mercenary spyware - extremely sophisticated exploit chains, historically associated with state actors, that cost millions of dollars to develop and are used against a very small number of targeted individuals," the company said. These are the attacks wielded against activists, journalists, and politicians. (Apple is donating 1,000 iPhone 17s to rights groups that work with people at risk of targeted attacks, according to .)
The answer? Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE). Meet MIE MIE was not developed to fight against low-hanging fruit -- the kinds of opportunistic cyberattackers who develop basic malware and rely on human error, phishing, and fraud to compromise a system. Instead, the memory safety feature aims to break complex, expensive, and targeted attack chains connected with state-sponsored threat actors and top-tier spyware developers.