Verizon's current deal on the iPhone 17 Pro not only gets you a free iPhone 17 Pro with a trade, but also six months of Apple One and the option to bundle in a free iPad.
iOS is the best mobile platform for triple-A games – giving Apple the chance to do something weird and wonderful for mobile gaming with its long-rumored folding iPhone.
The FCC mistakenly published a 163-page PDF containing detailed schematics for Apple's upcoming iPhone 16e, despite Apple explicitly requesting indefinite confidentiality to protect trade secrets. AppleInsider reports: A cover letter is also distributed alongside the schematics, addressed to the FCC and dated September 16, 2024. The letter from Apple is a request for the confidential treatment of documents that are filed with the FCC. [...] The letter from Apple requests a series of documents are withheld from public viewing "indefinitely." The justification is that they contain "confidential and proprietary trade secrets" that are not disclosed to the public post-release, due to giving competitors an "unfair advantage."
The list of documents, Apple states, includes: Block Diagrams, Electrical Schematic Diagrams, Technical Descriptions, Product Specifications, Antenna Locations, Tune-Up Procedure, and Software Security Description. Other documents, such as external and internal photographs, shots of the test setup, and the user manual, are deemed to be less damaging and have "short-term confidentiality" requirements. In those cases, Apple asks for short-term confidentiality for 180 days after the equipment authorization is granted by the FCC.
iFixit's teardown of Apple's iPhone Air reveals a device dominated by its battery, which occupies approximately two-thirds of the internal space while critical components including the logic board cluster at the top. The battery matches the component used in Apple's iPhone Air MagSafe battery pack and can be swapped between devices.
The top-heavy component layout addresses the bendgate vulnerability that damaged logic boards in previous thin iPhone models when pressure was applied to the device's middle section. Despite the iPhone Air's thinner profile, iFixit awarded it a 7 out of 10 repairability score, citing reduced component layering that provides more direct access to the USB-C connector, battery, and other serviceable parts compared to standard iPhone models. The dual-entry system further contributes to the device's serviceability.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max appear to provide little resistance to scratches and scuffs around the sharp edges of the camera bump. Tech blogger Zack Nelson demonstrates this weakness in a durability test on his JerryRigEverything YouTube channel, explaining that the anodized aluminium layer on the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max "does not stick to corners very well" -- creating a weak point in the coating. This is a known issue with the electrochemical anodizing process, so it was a design decision Apple knowingly made.
"For some reason, Apple didn't add a chamfer, fillet, or radius around the camera plateau, and I think it was intentional, so it looks cooler," Nelson says in the video. "But that decision to look cool out of the box is going to plague everyone who owns this phone down the road." The video shows that everyday objects, like a coin or house key carried in the same pocket as the iPhone 17 Pro, can chip away at the anodized coating around the sharp corners of the camera bump. However, that same mildly aggressive scratching on the flat surface of the camera plateau only produced dust that could be easily wiped away.
Apple’s latest operating systems for its most popular devices — iPhones, iPads and Macs — include patches for multiple vulnerabilities, but the company didn’t issue any warnings about active exploitation.
Apple patched 27 defects with the release of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 and 77 vulnerabilities with the release of macOS 26, including some bugs that affected software across all three devices. Apple’s new operating systems, which are now numbered for the year of their release, were published Monday as the company prepares to ship new iPhones later this week.
Users that don’t want to upgrade to the latest versions, which adopt a translucent design style Apple dubs “liquid glass,” can patch the most serious vulnerabilities by updating to iOS 18.7 and iPad 18.7 or macOS 15.7. Most Apple devices released in 2019 or earlier are not supported by the latest operating systems.
None of the vulnerabilities Apple disclosed this week appear to be under active attack, Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, told CyberScoop.
Apple previously issued an emergency software update to customers last month to patch a zero-day vulnerability — CVE-2025-43300 — that was “exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals,” the company said in a series of updates for iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
The company has addressed five actively exploited zero-days this year, including defects previously disclosed in January, February, March and April. Seven Apple vulnerabilities have been added to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s known exploited vulnerabilities catalog this year.
Unlike many vendors, Apple doesn’t provide details about the severity of vulnerabilities it addresses in software updates. Childs noted it would be helpful if Apple issued some sort of initial severity indicator alongside the vulnerabilities it patches — even if it doesn’t follow the Common Vulnerability Scoring System.
A pair of vulnerabilities patched in macOS — CVE-2025-43298, which affects PackageKit, and CVE-2025-43304, which affects StorageKit — are concerning because exploitation could allow an attacker to gain root privileges, Childs said.
“On the iOS side, I don’t see anything that makes me sweat immediately but there are a lot of bugs addressed,” he added.
Analyst Ben Thompson, commenting on Apple's outlook following the launch of the iPhone 17 lineup: Apple, to be fair, isn't selling the same sugar water year-after-year in a zero sum war with other sugar water companies. Their sugar water is getting better, and I think this year's seasonal concoction is particularly tasty. What is inescapable, however, is that while the company does still make new products -- I definitely plan on getting new AirPod Pro 3s! -- the company has, in the pursuit of easy profits, constrained the space in which it innovates.
That didn't matter for a long time: smartphones were the center of innovation, and Apple was consequently the center of the tech universe. Now, however, Apple is increasingly on the periphery, and I think that, more than anything, is what bums people out: no, Apple may not be a sugar water purveyor, but they are farther than they have been in years from changing the world.
Apple’s new Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) brings always-on memory-safety protection covering key attack surfaces — including the kernel and over 70 userland processes.
Apple has unveiled a comprehensive security system called Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) that represents a five-year engineering effort to combat sophisticated cyberattacks targeting individual users through memory corruption vulnerabilities.
The technology is built into Apple’s new iPhone 17 and iPhone Air devices, as well as the A19 and A19 Pro chips. It combines custom-designed hardware with changes to the operating system to deliver what Apple describes as “industry-first, always-on” memory safety protection. According to Apple’s security researchers, the system is primarily designed to defend against sophisticated attacks from so-called “mercenary spyware,” rather than from typical consumer malware.
“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,” the company wrote in a blog posted Tuesday. “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.”
Memory corruption vulnerabilities have long accounted for some of the most pervasive threats to operating system security. These flaws happen when software doesn’t properly control how it reads from or writes to memory, allowing attackers to change, overwrite, or access parts of a computer’s memory they shouldn’t be able to.
Exploits targeting these flaws — in particular buffer overflows and use-after-free errors — have underpinned the sophisticated, multi-million-dollar exploit chain that powers spyware. Attackers exploit these flaws, often in “zero-click” (no user interaction required) scenarios, to run harmful code, steal data, or crash systems. For example, NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware was powered by three memory corruption vulnerabilities that were chained together.
Recognizing this, Apple expanded efforts over the past five years to address memory safety “at scale.” The company worked closely with the chip designer Arm to improve a memory protection system where memory checks happen immediately, every single time memory is used, instead of sometimes waiting, which could leave a small window open for attackers. This led to the creation of Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE), a key part of Apple’s new system.
EMTE works by giving each piece of memory a special secret tag. Whenever the device tries to use a particular section of memory, the hardware checks the tag to make sure it is correct. If the tag doesn’t match what is expected, the device will immediately stop the program and record the incident. By ensuring every block of memory has its own unique tag, and by changing these tags whenever memory is reused, Apple’s system blocks unauthorized access efforts before they can cause damage.
“Apple has a deep understanding of this problem space, and because they control both the hardware (Apple Silicon) and the software (iOS), they have the unique ability to engineer a tightly integrated and very effective security mechanism,” said Patrick Wardle, co-founder and CEO of DoubleYou, a company that specializes in Apple security. “This kind of approach, which depends on tight coupling between the chip and the operating system, is something most other vendors cannot replicate as easily since they do not own both sides of the stack.”
The company acknowledges in a blog post that the system does not entirely eliminate spyware’s ability to be executed on an Apple device, but makes it extremely difficult for attacks to successfully run spyware or maintain access if a device has been compromised.
“While there’s no such thing as perfect security, MIE is designed to dramatically constrain attackers and their degrees of freedom during exploitation,” the blog post reads.
The efforts mirror similar systems put in place by Microsoft, which has a memory integrity feature in Windows 11, and Google, which has a similar system in its Pixel devices.
Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at Access Now, told CyberScoop she thought it was “great” that Apple was taking effective measures since it’s “always a cat-and-mouse” game when large tech companies create ways to thwart spyware developers.
“These spyware developers like finding new ways of targeting people, evading detection and so on,” Krapiva told CyberScoop. “This is great to see Apple coming up with new ways to protect high-risk users.
The one drawback Krapiva did highlight is that this system is only available on new devices. AccessNow works internationally with groups that are often targeted by spyware on devices that are several generations older than what most consumers use.
“For our communities, oftentimes these are grassroots, independent media. It’s very hard to afford new devices, especially Apple devices,” she told CyberScoop. “It could be a nice thing for Apple to have some kind of a program to allow for these types of groups to be able to access this.”
MIE can also be taken advantage of by third-party applications, including social media and messaging applications. Additionally, EMTE is available to all Apple developers in Xcode, its developer toolkit, as part of the Enhanced Security feature it rolled out earlier this year.
Apple has unveiled its iPhone 17 lineup, introducing three distinct models targeting different market segments. The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max feature an aluminum unibody design incorporating a vapor chamber for thermal management, enabling the A19 Pro chip to deliver 40% better sustained performance than its predecessor. Both Pro models include three 48MP cameras offering 8x optical zoom -- the longest in an iPhone -- and an 18MP Center Stage front camera.
The standard iPhone 17 gains ProMotion display technology previously exclusive to Pro models, along with dual 48MP rear cameras and the Center Stage system. Apple introduced iPhone Air as the thinnest iPhone at 5.6mm, built on a titanium frame housing the A19 Pro, N1 wireless, and C1X cellular chips. All models feature Ceramic Shield 2 protection offering three times better scratch resistance than previous generations. The iPhone 17 starts at $799 with 256GB storage, iPhone Air at $999, iPhone 17 Pro at $1,099, and Pro Max at $1,199.
Separate fixes to macOS and iOS patch respective flaws in the kernel and WebKit that can allow threat actors to take over devices and are under attack.
Login
