Apple and Corellium settle lawsuit over iOS device virtualization
Apple and security company Corellium have ended the pending lawsuit with a settlement, writes The Washington Post. Apple was not happy with the iOS emulation that Corellium is offering to security researchers and filed a lawsuit two years ago.
According to The Washington Post, there would have been another hearing on Monday, but it was canceled because the federal lawsuit has been settled. The newspaper writes that on the basis of court documents. The terms under which the settlement was agreed have been kept secret. The paper reports that Corellium’s sales team has confirmed that the company is still selling its iOS virtual devices. Corellium co-founder Christopher Wade declined to comment, and neither did Apple.
Apple sued Corellium in August 2019 to end virtualized iPhones. These give researchers the ability to test iPhone software on computers, rather than actual iPhones. Corellium offers an iOS environment in the browser, with special pentesting software. The idea is that researchers are then better able to search for vulnerabilities, for example because it allows them to switch iOS versions more easily.
The Cupertino company maintained that this infringed its copyright. Apple also thought it could be dangerous if Corellium’s tools fell into the wrong hands and that the security company provided its software to customers without an approval process. In the end, part of Apple’s lawsuit was dismissed, but on the DMCA copyright infringement claim, Apple got it right.
The matter was not quite over yet. The Washington Post writes that Corellium would face the prospect of continuing to litigate for years to come. According to many in the security research community, that was seen as something that would negatively impact independent research.
Corellium made headlines in 2015 when co-founder David Wang helped the FBI unlock an iPhone owned by one of the gunmen linked to the deadly San Bernardino shooting. At the beginning of this year, Corellium made headlines when it successfully ported Linux to a Mac with M1-soc.