Hardware-level security

iOS has very tight integration between hardware and software protection. All the devices built upon the Apple A8 or A7 processors provide cryptographic support. These devices use the AES (short for American Encryption Standard) 256 cryptographic engine and are built into a Direct Memory Access (DMA) path between the flash and main system memory. All devices are provided with a UID along with a device Group ID (GID), both of which are compiled at the processor level. A person testing the firmware will only be able to see the encryption and decryption of these techniques and will not have direct access.