DeletedUser87 https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-look-at-imessage-in-ios-14.html?m=1
Back in 2021 Google Project Zero analyzed the hardening that Apple had done in the Messages app. It’s an interesting read and in the end they congratulate Apple on the work they’ve done:
Overall, these changes are probably very close to the best that could’ve been done given the need for backwards compatibility, and they should have a significant impact on the security of iMessage and the platform as a whole. It’s great to see Apple putting aside the resources for these kinds of large refactorings to improve end users’ security.
And that was all the way back in 2021. I’d love to see an updated post by the Project Zero team to see what other work has been done. If you think this work is truly useless then you’re disagreeing with security researchers on this. Sandboxing and hardening work can never fully eliminate exploits, but it’s important not to hyper focus on counting exploits and more on the architectural improvements they are making.
Furthermore, these changes also highlight the value of offensive security work: not just single bugs were fixed, but instead structural improvements were made based on insights gained from exploit development work.
Chromium gets exploits, but it’s the most secure major browser by a country mile. You’re right that all the features they have are potential attack surface, I personally use a lot of them and I know many others do as well so I’d prefer to keep them. I’d prefer Apple focused more on this type of low level sandboxing and other improvements than removing features that I use.