A German security analyst is about to unveil a new jailbreaking process that will make iPhones much more secure. Stefan Esser, a security consultant and application developer for SektionEins, has found a way to support Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) in iOS, and has developed a new jailbreak tool - to be called antid0te - to implement it, making iPhones much more resistant to malware attacks. The tool will be announced at a security conference next week and should be available soon thereafter.
ASLR works by randomly assigning data to memory to make it tougher for attackers to figure out the location of critical operating system functions, greatly increasing the difficulty of designing reliable exploits. ASLR was built into Windows Vista over three years ago, and is supported in Windows Phone 7, as well as (to a limited extent) in Mac OS X.