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For the past few years, Apple started included the Secure Enclave chip on its devices as a way to encrypt and secure user data stored on the device. Now, a new exploit has allegedly been found for the chip, putting data of millions of users at risk.

Apple Secure Enclave Exploit

As per the reports, Chinese hackers from the Pangu Team have found an “unpatchable” exploit on the Apple Secure Enclave chip that could break the encryption of the private keys stored on the device.

This is claimed to be unpatchable because the vulnerability is related to the hardware and not software, so there’s nothing Apple can do to fix this issue for the devices that have already been shipped. This also means that hackers need to have physical access to the device in order to do obtain data.

While there are no exact details available about the exploit, but the devices at risk include all the devices running Apple A7 chipset to A11 Bionic chip.

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Following devices come packed with Secure Enclave chip:

  • iPhone 5s and later
  • iPad (5th gen) and later
  • iPad Air (1st gen) and later
  • iPad mini 2 and later
  • iPad Pro
  • Mac computers with the T1 or T2 chip
  • Apple TV HD (4th gen) and later
  • Apple Watch Series 1 and later
  • HomePod

For those who are unaware, Secure Enclave is a security-related co-processor that Apple includes in almost all of its devices now as a way of providing an extra layer of security for the user data stored locally on the device.

The data on the device is encrypted with random private keys, which can only be accessed by the Secure Enclave. These keys are unique to the device and are never synchronized with iCloud. The chip also stores keys for passwords, the credit card for Apple Pay, and even biometric data for Touch ID and Face ID.

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