Motherboard:
Dev-fused devices are sometimes called prototypes in the security research industry. They are essentially phones that have not finished the production process, or have been reverted to a development state.
These rare iPhones have many security features disabled, allowing researchers to probe them much more easily than the iPhones you can buy at a store. Since the Black Hat talk, dev-fused iPhones have become a tool that security researchers around the world use to find previously unknown iPhone vulnerabilities (known as zero days), Motherboard has learned.
Fascinating look at a world few of us know about.
Apple and its suppliers MUST put a stop to this trade or else iPhone security will be a joke. I am sure it will not be an easy matter.
There’s no way they can put a stop to this because the underlying asset is too valuable. The alternative is that Apple can no longer rely on security through obscurity and should share the same devices with white hat security researchers on a short leash.