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Can iOS apps read the RAM contents/cache/data of any other arbitrary app? Assume that the following conditions applies:

  • The device is using only official iOS (no hacks or "jailbreaking")
  • Obviously (due to the above conditions), all apps are downloaded and approved/signed by the App Store
  • None of the apps are using exploits (or all known exploits have been patched) and programmer API restrictions are working as intended
  • No other app on the device has been specifically set up to communicate with the app that wants to read the data

Context: preventing apps from snooping on each other. In particular, could a malicious app that somehow got through screening read RAM contents from every other app and harvest login cookies or personal information?

According to the Apple developer docs it appears that apps are sandboxed to prevent this from happening; apps that want to share data have to be specifically set up for it (?).

Searching on Google only turned up 2 Q&A's:

both of which only discuss the topic in the context of using a developer kit or jailbroken devices, neither of which are on topic in this question.

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    I'm not clear on your question. If the Apple docs say that things are sandboxed, then is your question if there is a known vulnerability that still makes it possible?
    – schroeder ♦
    Oct 10, 2017 at 13:24

1 Answer 1

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No, this is not possible without the use of exploits. Even in Android, this is not possible.

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  • I'd also like to add this is not possible in pretty much any OS without special permissions (debugger, root, etc) due to segmentation. This is where the segfault error comes from, meaning segmentation fault aka the program attempted to RW memory out of its bounds.
    – Allison
    Oct 11, 2017 at 2:19
  • In Windows and Linux, this is possible when the thread is the same user or admin to the remote thread.
    – Daniel Grover
    Oct 11, 2017 at 13:39
  • ‚No unless there is an exploit‘ means ‚Yes when you use an exploit‘ :)
    – eckes
    Oct 13, 2017 at 12:38

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