iOS Hacker's Handbook

Chapter 1

iOS Security Basics

If you're like us, every time you get your hands on a new device you wonder how secure it is. The iPhone was no exception. Here was a device that had jumped across the threshold from being a phone that might have a small web browser to a device that was more like your computer than your old phone. Surely there were going to be similar security issues in these (and future) devices to the issues that were already occurring on desktop computers. What precautions and security mechanisms had Apple built into these devices to prevent compromises? Here was a chance to start a whole new branch of computing, from the beginning. How important was security going to be for these emerging smart devices?

This chapter answers these questions for iOS devices. It begins by looking at the hardware seen for various iOS devices and then quickly moves into describing the security architecture of iOS 5. This includes highlighting the many layers of defense built into current devices to make attacks by malware and exploitation by attackers difficult. It then illustrates how these defenses have held up (or not) in the real world by showing some attacks that have occurred against iOS devices. This section on iOS attacks takes a historical approach starting from attacks against the very first iPhone and ending with attacks against iOS 5 devices. Along the way you will notice how much the security of iOS devices has improved. Whereas the very first versions of iOS had almost ...