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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>it would be prudent to force Apple to allow other software to run on the device if the user so desires.

>[...]

>E.g. Imagine how fast a zero day zero click iOS worm could brick every device and cause a huge disruption to daily life.

how would a 0click iOS worm be mitigated by allowing users to run whatever apps they want? You can run whatever apps on windows, but that didn't stop eternalblue from ravaging corporate networks.

edit: it seems like I misinterpreted what "other software" meant. my reply to swiley takes this into account.

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I think the "other software" in question here must refer to alternative operating systems, not merely other apps. Though even allowing alternative browsers with their own engines could possibly reduce the monoculture risks associated with that portion of the attack surface.

By running a different OS or firmware on the device allows for a smaller attack surface

While that would change the status quo of "iPhone == iOS", running a different OS is not what most people would do, so it really wouldn't move the needle on how much harm is possible with a potential widely-deployed 0-click exploit.

People generally buy iPhone for the no-nonsense (or low-nonsense) UX provided by iOS compared to Android - as in, they want to purchase iOS, but obviously it's only compatible and available on certain hardware. An extremely, extremely small majority would install an alternative OS on their phone unless that OS is something like "iOS but with built-in hacks for mobile games", or "iOS but paid app store apps can be sideloaded for free".

They wouldn't be, just like they aren't on Linux, Windows 7, and older OSX.

So not whatever apps you want, but rather whatever operating systems you want? That makes more sense, but I'm skeptical that'd materialize to everything. On android phones with unlocked bootloaders (ie. "allow other software to run on the device if the user so desires"), and the only "other software" that's available are... AOSP forks. There are forks with better mitigations (eg. grapheneos), but they're still by and large, android.

This is mostly because making a different OS is insanely hard, at least if you want to support the many different pieces of hardware your OS might run on. Project Sandcastle is different and making progress[0], likely because Apple mobile hardware uses vastly similar components and suppliers.

0: https://projectsandcastle.org/status#:~:text=WHAT%E2%80%99S%...

Unfortunately, Project Sandcastle hasn’t had any commits in at least two years[0].

0: https://github.com/corellium/projectsandcastle/commit/03db9c... (the latest commit)

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