Open-Source Project Brings Full iOS 27 Virtualization to Apple Silicon

InfoQ Homepage News Open-Source Project Brings Full iOS 27 Virtualization to Apple Silicon

Building on previous work by wh1te4ever to run a virtual iPhone without using emulation, vphone-cli automates the entire process. This goes from downloading the firmware and patching the boot chain to performing a DFU restore and completing the first boot. The resulting virtual iPhone provides SSH access with root privileges, as well as VNC access to its graphical interface.

Apple has never officially provided an iOS VM for developers or security researchers. However, the technology it developed for Private Cloud Compute (PCC) to facilitate security research on the platform through a Virtual Research Environment , included an "iPhone Research Environment Virtual Machine". The vphone-cli project essentially brings those components together and streamlines the process of turning them into a working iPhone VM.