Anyone who wants to do serious research into hacking iPhones needs to get their hands on a “dev-fused” unit — a prototype that can be used to ferret out iOS secrets.
These are used by both malicious hackers and security researchers alike.
Even though there doesn’t seem to be a legal way to obtain one of these, they aren’t tremendously hard to find, according to Motherboard.
One called JinStore operates openly on Twitter, albeit from Shanghai. There’s another right in Manhattan calling itself Apple Internal Store.
These dev-fused iPhones don’t come cheap. Expect to pay around $1800.
Benefits of a prototype iPhone
iPhones that are sold to the public have been secured so that they can’t be hacked… at least in theory. Dev-fused units are one of the tools Apple uses internally to test that security, and hackers go over them carefully looking for ways to circumvent the protections in the shipping products.
Security researchers do the same thing, trying to find exploits before criminals do. And these devices are almost certainly employed by the companies that make iPhone unlocking tools.
Dev-fused units are thought to be the only way to examine the code run by the iPhone’s Secure Enclave Processor (SEP). This chip runs its own operating system and handles FaceID, TouchID, and other security tasks. This OS is normally encrypted, but apparently not on prototype units.
Out in the open. Sort of
it’s not clear why Apple doesn’t make more effort to crack down on the sale of these units. It actually seems to be looking the other way. “As long as you don’t break [Apple’s] balls, or show an iPhone 11 prototype, or an unreleased device, they’re most likely cool with that,” the man who runs Apple Internal Store told Motherboard.
That said, the owner of JinStore recently posted on his Twitter feed, “Jin is not going to post any information about Prototype recently. DM him if you have any question or check his previous tweets.” Perhaps he’s feeling some heat.
