iPhone Emulation Company Sued by Apple Says It's Making iPhones Safer

A startup that makes replicas of the iPhone that help hackers find vulnerabilities is accusing Apple of suing it in an attempt to shut it down. Corellium also fired back at Apple and claimed the company owes it $300,000. From a report: On Monday, Corellium, the startup that was sued by Apple for alleged copyright infringement in August, filed its response to the lawsuit. Apple alleged that Corellium's product is illegal, and helps researchers sell hacking tools based on software bugs found in iOS to government agencies that then use them to hack targets. The cybersecurity world was shocked by Apple's lawsuit, which was seen as an attempt to use copyright as an excuse to control the thriving, and largely legal, market for software vulnerabilities. The lawsuit was filed just a few days after Apple announced it would give researchers special "pre-hacked" devices to allow them to find and report more bugs to the company.

"Through its invitation-only research device program and this lawsuit, Apple is trying to control who is permitted to identify vulnerabilities, if and how Apple will address identified vulnerabilities, and if Apple will disclose identified vulnerabilities to the public at all," Corellium argues in its response, echoing arguments made by the security research community. In its response, Corellium essentially argues that using Apple's code in Corellium is fair use and its product makes the world a better place by helping security researchers inspect the iPhone's operating system, find flaws in it, and help Apple fix them. With Corellium, researchers can more easily find bugs by creating virtual instances of iOS and test them more quickly, as opposed to having to use actual physical devices. Corellium attempts to illustrate this by including "before" and "after" images in its response that demonstrate what it was like to try to hack the iPhone before it released its software.