Hopefully it does not expose sensitive iPhone user data

Aug 4, 2020 04:42 GMT  ·  By

Apple has made data security and user privacy priorities of its iPhone push, as well as two important pillars of its marketing strategy all over the world, not just for the smartphone, but for the other products too.

And needless to say, the Cupertino-based tech giant has invested aggressively in device security, so its offering now includes important new features that are supposed to keep everyone protected.

But as Apple is about to find out the hard way, there’s always room for improvements as Team Pangu has recently discovered what’s being described as an unpatched vulnerability in what’s supposed to be the most secure place on an iPhone.

It’s the Secure Enclave Processor, or SEP, which is the home of very sensitive information, including Apple Pay details.

The news of the discovery was shared on Twitter by Jin Wook Kim, a member of the CERT team in South Korea and Japan, and by the looks of things, quite a lot of devices are affected.

First of all, let’s have a look at the Secure Enclave Processor.

Basically, the Secure Enclave is a separate processor that takes care of highly sensitive data on an iPhone. Apple decided to separate it from the rest of the system in an attempt to restrict access to the stored details should someone actually manage to bypass the protections on an iPhone and reach the information on the device.

So technically, if a malicious actor does manage to break into your device and access things like photos and messages, they still can’t see the data that’s stored on the Secure Enclave.

In Apple’s own words, here’s what the Secure Enclave is:

“The Secure Enclave is a secure coprocessor that includes a hardware-based key manager, which is isolated from the main processor to provide an extra layer of security. The key data is encrypted in the Secure Enclave system on chip (SoC), which includes a random number generator.

The Secure Enclave also maintains the integrity of its cryptographic operations even if the device kernel has been compromised. Communication between the Secure Enclave and the application processor is tightly controlled by isolating it to an interrupt-driven mailbox and shared memory data buffers.”

How the Secure Enclave works on an iPhone

Pretty much all Apple devices that are still in use today come with such a Secure Enclave, including the following:  

  • iPhone 5s (or later)
  • iPad Air (or later)
  • Mac computers that contain the T1 chip or the Apple T2 Security Chip
  • Apple TV 4th generation (or later)
  • Apple Watch Series 1 (or later)
  • HomePod

The good news, sort of, is that the vulnerability only affects the A7 to A11 Bionic chips, so not all devices mentioned above are vulnerable to a potential exploit. In other words, the iPhone X is the newest iPhone model that would be exposed, as Apple has apparently resolved the whole thing in the A12 chip and newer, so iPhone XS and iPhone 11 users are fully protected.

The other good news is that Pangu hasn’t shared any specifics on the vulnerability just yet, and we don’t know if the flaw allows a malicious actor to read sensitive data like Apple Pay or Touch ID details, so hopefully, more info won’t go public. This is critical for the security of iPhone users, especially because older iPhones still account for a massive part of the iPhone userbase right now.

In the meantime, there’s not much you can do right now, other than hope that Apple has put other protections in place to prevent such an exploit.

The company hasn’t released any comments on this alleged discovery.

Photo Gallery (2 Images)

iPhone X and older are affected by the bug
How the Secure Enclave works on an iPhone
Open gallery