Apple iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Feature A19 Chips With Spyware-Resistant Memory Safety
Sep 10, 2025
Spyware / Vulnerability
Apple on Tuesday revealed a new security feature called Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) that's built into its newly introduced iPhone models, including iPhone 17 and iPhone Air. MIE, per the tech giant, offers "always-on memory safety protection" across critical attack surfaces such as the kernel and over 70 userland processes without sacrificing device performance by designing its A19 and A19 Pro chips, keeping this aspect in mind. "Memory Integrity Enforcement is built on the robust foundation provided by our secure memory allocators, coupled with Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE) in synchronous mode, and supported by extensive Tag Confidentiality Enforcement policies," the company noted . The effort is an aim to improve memory safety and prevent bad actors, specifically those leveraging mercenary spyware , from weaponizing such flaws in the first place to break into devices as part of highly-targeted attacks. The technology that underpins MI...