I don’t think Apple are claiming to have invented security that didn’t exist before. The idea of a Secure Enclave has existed for years in the form of Chip-and

I don’t think Apple are claiming to have invented security that didn’t exist before. The idea of a Secure Enclave has existed for years in the form of Chip-and-PIN bank cards. Before that HSMs are built on the same principle (a bank card I just a tiny HSM). Of this works on the principle that it’s very hard to reverse engineer silicon, and that you can make it harder by creating silicon designs that deliberately obfuscate their purpose. End result is a piece of hardware that very difficult to take apart with irreversible damaging it, and destroying the data in the process. The attack itself would also require an extremely high level of skill. Ultimately no security is perfect, it’s not meant to be. Security is just meant to skew the effort-reward equation enough that no one can be bothered to break into your thing.