The groundbreaking memory security feature known as Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) in the new iPhone 17 range, which was released on September 9, 2025, is intended to reduce the effectiveness of malware attacks significantly.
In collaboration with ARM, Apple created this mechanism to guard against memory corruption and shield users from the most popular hacking techniques that target iPhones. Experts believe MIE might make iPhone exploitation much more difficult, which could be a game-changer for mobile security.
Memory Integrity enforcement: a new era for iPhone security
MIE functions as a digital gatekeeper, assigning tags to specific memory portions so only authorised apps can access them. Any app lacking the correct tags will crash, blocking potential hacking attempts.
Additionally, a complementary feature called Tag Confidentiality Enforcement stops attackers from retrieving these tags using side-channel attacks.
This layered defence is expected to disrupt spyware relying on memory corruption strategies, including hardware-based tools aiming to break into iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Pro devices.
An anonymous security researcher described MIE as “the closest thing right now to hack-proof tech that connects to the internet”.
Apple claims MIE covers the kernel and over 70 userland processes continuously, utilising a new hardware extension called Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE).
This approach mitigates vulnerabilities, such as the Spectre V1 attack, with minimal impact on device performance and battery life. Matthias Frielingsdorf, vice president of research at iVerify, stated that MIE’s existence could drive spyware developers out of the market by making exploit development more costly and complex.
Apple considers this “the most important upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems,” emphasising its significance for iPhones and other Apple devices featuring related hardware enhancements.
Changing the game for spyware developers
This new layer of memory protection directly counters techniques used by mercenary spyware like Pegasus, which rely on exploiting memory safety flaws. By raising the bar for successful attacks, MIE forces attackers to resort to far more complicated and expensive methods, potentially reducing the prevalence of such spyware on iPhones.
Apple’s internal testing combined lab scenarios with real-world attack simulations, showing that MIE can block many of the most effective exploitation strategies developed over the past 25 years.
This innovation is expected to redefine how memory safety is managed in consumer operating systems and could set new standards across the industry.
With the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air, Apple integrates MIE into both hardware and software, making this protection always active without harming usability.
This effort signals Apple’s ambition to provide users with the highest level of privacy and security against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, positioning the iPhone 17 series as a formidable option against digital intrusion.
This development is of great interest to users concerned about privacy and security and cybersecurity professionals who are watching how major tech companies innovate to combat spyware threats.