Security

Further protections

Address Space Layout Randomization

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) protects against the exploitation of memory corruption bugs. Built-in apps use ASLR to ensure that all memory regions are randomized upon launch. Randomly arranging the memory addresses of executable code, system libraries, and related programming constructs reduces the likelihood of many sophisticated exploits. For example, a return-to-libc attack attempts to trick a device into executing malicious code by manipulating memory addresses of the stack and system libraries. Randomizing the placement of these makes the attack far more difficult to execute, especially across multiple devices. Xcode, the iOS or iPadOS development environments, automatically compiles third-party programs with ASLR support turned on.

Execute Never

Further protection is provided by iOS and iPadOS using ARM’s Execute Never (XN) feature, which marks memory pages as non-executable. Memory pages marked as both writable and executable can be used only by apps under tightly controlled conditions: The kernel checks for the presence of the Apple-only dynamic code-signing entitlement. Even then, only a single mmap call can be made to request an executable and writable page, which is given a randomized address. Safari uses this functionality for its JavaScript JIT compiler.

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Apple Platform Security

Further protections

Address Space Layout Randomization

Execute Never