Apple’s new Memory Integrity Enforcement system deals a huge blow to spyware developers

Apple introduced Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), an always-on memory safety system for new iPhone 17/Air devices and A19 chips that pairs hardware-based Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE) with OS safeguards to disrupt buffer overflows, use-after-free exploits, and zero-click spyware chains. EMTE assigns and verifies secret tags on memory blocks, halting execution on mismatches and logging incidents, and is available to developers via Xcode’s Enhanced Security, with potential adoption by third-party apps. While not eliminating spyware and currently limited to new devices, experts say MIE significantly raises exploit costs and mirrors similar protections in Windows 11 and Google Pixel.