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Memory Integrity Enforcement

(security.apple.com)
458 points circuit | 1 comments | 09 Sep 25 18:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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ysnp ◴[09 Sep 25 20:43 UTC] No.45188721[source]▶
>Google took a great first step last year when they offered MTE to those who opt in to their program for at-risk users. But even for users who turn it on, the effectiveness of MTE on Android is limited by the lack of deep integration with the operating system that distinguishes Memory Integrity Enforcement and its use of EMTE on Apple silicon.

>With the introduction of the iPhone 17 lineup and iPhone Air, we’re excited to deliver Memory Integrity Enforcement: the industry’s first ever, comprehensive, always-on memory-safety protection covering key attack surfaces — including the kernel and over 70 userland processes — built on the Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE) and supported by secure typed allocators and tag confidentiality protections.

Of course it is a little disappointing not to see GrapheneOS's efforts in implementing [1] and raising awareness [2] recognised by others but it is very encouraging to see Apple making a serious effort on this. Hopefully it spurs Google on to do the same in Pixel OS. It should also inspire confidence that GrapheneOS are generally among the leaders in creating a system that defends the device owner against unknown threats.

[1] https://grapheneos.org/releases#2023103000 [2] https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1716946325277909087#m

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saagarjha ◴[09 Sep 25 20:52 UTC] No.45188900[source]▶
Apple has been working on this for years. It's not like they started thinking about memory tagging when Daniel decided to turn it on in GrapheneOS.
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ysnp ◴[09 Sep 25 21:05 UTC] No.45189111[source]▶
I didn't mean to imply Apple (and Google) hadn't been spearheading multi-year efforts to ship this in collaboration with Arm, I regret a little that it came across that way. Just that it would be nice to see production use of it acknowledged even just as a passing comment.

As an outsider I am quite ignorant to what security developments these companies are considering and when the trade-offs are perhaps too compromising for them to make it to production. So I can't appreciate the scale of what Apple had to do to reach this stage, whereas with GrapheneOS I know they favour privacy/security on balance. I use that as a weak signal to gauge how committed Apple/Google/Microsoft are to realising those kinds of goals too.

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1. strcat ◴[09 Sep 25 22:55 UTC] No.45190566[source]▶
ARM largely built and shipped it on their own. Cortex cores were the first real world implementation. Pushing ARM to care about it as a security feature instead of only a bug finding feature is something Apple and Google are probably responsible for doing. Pixels are not the only Android devices making MTE but were the first to take advantage of the CPU support by actually setting it up and making it available for use. There are other Android devices doing that now too.

Qualcomm has to make their own implementation which has significantly delayed widespread availability. Exynos and MediaTek have it though.