A brief history of iOS emulation

Many efforts to emulate iOS have been tried over the years. Currently, the only successful commercial product that does so is made by Corellium Inc., but its internals are completely unknown and the product is closed source. Additionally, the owners are facing legal challenges from Apple. In the open source community, some incomplete attempts have been made, such as those by @zhuowei in 2018 and Aleph Research in 2019. Unfortunately, development on these attempts stopped after a BlackHat demo, and the last commit is from September 2021.

Although researchers look for a reliable open source alternative, the situation seems almost hopeless. The only way to sustain such projects is to have enough free time to devote with no guarantee on the result or success. Jing Tian and Antonio Bianchi were recently awarded an NFS grant to support the development of an emulator that is reliable and constantly maintained. The National Science Foundation sponsors this...