Bethesda, MD — Jan. 12, 2011 — Arxan Technologies®, a leading provider of software security solutions that protect applications from attack in distributed or un-trusted environments, today announced the availability of EnsureIT™ for Apple iOS, the newest addition to its multi-platform suite of application hardening solutions, to harden Apple® iOS for ARM mobile applications against reverse-engineering or tampering for unauthorized access, piracy and compromise.

iOS, Apple's mobile operating system was developed originally for the iPhone®, and has since been used on the iPod touch®, iPad® and Apple TV®, as well.  Given the popularity of these Apple computing platforms and application downloads for Apple devices now numbering in the billions, content developers consider Apple iOS support a must for their mobile and connected home applications development.  As of Oct. 20, 2010, Apple's App Store contained more than 300,000 iOS applications which have collectively been downloaded more than 7billion times.

This rapid adoption has not gone unnoticed by hackers who are being drawn to Apple iOS-enabled mobile devices in an effort to pirate, steal intellectual property (IP) and jeopardize business models.  Readily available toolkits can be used today by hackers to compromise the integrity of Apple iOS code through reverse engineering, disassembly and debugging, and jailbroken iPhones further increase the risk of app tampering, piracy and malware insertion.  Software protection is needed to maintain the integrity of the application, and the protection of business models, IP and digital rights management (DRM) robustness rules against “Man-at-the End” attacks on the binaries.

According to Paul Roberts of Threatpost.com, “we think there are a lot of reasons to expect that the security of mobile devices will be big news in 2011.  However, as we’ve reported, security often takes the back seat in the go-go world of mobile application development.  SMS Trojans may be the dominant form of mobile malware, but there’s ample reason to believe that attacks focused on mobile Web applications will surge ahead of device-specific attacks in 2011.”

EnsureIT for Apple iOS provides automated defend, detect and react capabilities by deploying various security techniques (called Guards) such as obfuscation, checksum and anti-debug directly into the software code of each app to harden binaries against discovery and compromise.  Like the rest of Arxan’s proven code hardening products, EnsureIT for Apple iOS is architected for durability and resilience with a tunable layered network of diverse Guards that offer control, trust and tamper-resistance for the app.  This newest expansion to the Arxan product line also provides code security without changing the source code and without disrupting app functioning.

“Apple iOS continues to power application development for the smartphone and mobile device markets, delivering rich applications for both the consumer market and the enterprise,” said Kevin Morgan, chief technology officer of Arxan.  “Customers are demanding protection for their apps across multiple mobile, embedded and desktop environments, and we are pleased to expand our solutions to cover the popular Apple iOS app market with durable and low-impact security against piracy and compromise.”  

EnsureIT for Apple iOS builds upon Arxan’s patented, proven and award-winning application hardening technology to secure distributed code in mobile apps. 

Key features of EnsureIT for Apple iOS include:

• Tunable security for mobile platforms and associated application offerings
• Layered network of protections, with no single point of failure
• No changes to source code required
• Support for the ARM processor

With its EnsureIT and GuardIT® product lines, Arxan provides an unprecedented cross-platform software protection suite for desktop, server, mobile and embedded environments, with application security solutions that target multiple threat vectors.   Other members of Arxan’s EnsureIT Family of Products for mobile and embedded software protection include EnsureIT for Android on ARM, EnsureIT for Linux on ARM , and EnsureIT for PowerPC.

This comprehensive software security portfolio enables application providers with a single vendor to meet their security needs to protect code and keys.  Arxan’s application hardening technology solutions are available for multiple operating systems, platforms, architectures  and languages including Android, Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, C/C++, Objective C/C++, .NET, Java, ARM, PowerPC  and others.

For more information regarding Arxan’s EnsureIT or any of Arxan’s application hardening products, please call 301-968-4290 or email info@arxan.com.