iOS Vulnerability Researcher

Census-Sa; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Birthday Paid Day off

Coffee, lunch and office snacks free

Private Medical and Life Insurance

Funded certifications & postgraduate

Recognition programs including a gift

Exposure to international teams

Opportunities for professional growth

Job summary

CENSUS is seeking an iOS Vulnerability Researcher to join our security research team, focusing on vulnerability discovery and exploitation across the iOS userland.

You’ll spend your time reverse engineering proprietary Apple software, identifying security boundaries and interesting attack surfaces, developing fuzzers and instrumentation, and turning promising primitives into reliable vulnerability research.

Qualifications

• Hands-on vulnerability research, reverse engineering, exploitation research, or closely related security research experience.
• Strong understanding of C/C++ fundamentals, memory corruption, and common vulnerability classes.
• Solid ARM64/ARM64e assembly and calling-convention knowledge.
• Practical experience with reverse engineering using tools such as IDA Pro, Ghidra, Hopper, or Binary Ninja.
• Experience debugging with lldb.
• Experience performing crash analysis without a fully capable debugging environment.
• Experience with Frida, DTrace, custom instrumentation, or comparable dynamic-analysis tooling.
• Ability to write research tooling in Python and at least one systems language such as C, C++, Objective-C, Swift.
• Understanding of Objective-C & Swift runtime behavior and iOS process architecture.
• Familiarity with fuzzing methodologies and experience building or adapting fuzzing harnesses.
• Ability to reason about the exploitability of a vulnerability rather than stopping at crash discovery.
• Being able to adapt to scenarios where the complete technical picture is not present.

Responsibilities

• Reverse engineer iOS binaries and system frameworks on ARM64/ARM64e.
• Identify and investigate previously unknown vulnerabilities in iOS userland components.
• Analyze system daemons, XPC services, framework APIs, parsers, and other undocumented components of iOS/macOS.
• Develop targeted fuzzers and harnesses.
• Develop reliable proof-of-concepts and undocumented techniques in controlled research environments.
• Research the practical impact of modern mitigations including PAC, MTE/MIE, sandboxing, hardened runtime protections, and related platform defenses.
• Develop custom tooling for binary analysis, instrumentation, tracing, fuzzing, and vulnerability research.
• Collaborate with other researchers on projects.

Skills

Vulnerability research

Reverse engineering

Exploitation research

C/C++ fundamentals

Memory corruption

ARM64 assembly

LLDB

Python scripting

Objective-C

Swift

IDAPRO / Ghidra / Hopper / Binary Nija

Tools

IDA Pro

Ghidra

Hopper

Binary Ninja

Job description

CENSUS is an internationally acclaimed Cybersecurity services provider. We support the needs of multiple industries, providing IT and OT security assessment services to public and private organizations around the world, including international financial institutions and Fortune 500 companies. Powered by cutting-edge research, scientific analysis, and real-world engineering, we deliver unparalleled security assessment services for software, devices, infrastructure, and organizations. Learn more about CENSUS at census-labs.com.

About the Role

CENSUS is looking for a iOS Vulnerability Researcher to join our security research team, focused on vulnerability discovery and exploitation across the iOS userland attack surface.

You’ll spend your time reverse engineering proprietary Apple software, identifying security boundaries and interesting attack surfaces, developing fuzzers and instrumentation, and turning promising primitives into reliable vulnerability research.

This is a hands-on research role for someone who enjoys working close to the metal, understands Apple's ecosystem and is comfortable operating without complete documentation.

Responsibilities

• Reverse engineer iOS binaries and system frameworks on ARM64/ARM64e.
• Identify and investigate previously unknown vulnerabilities in iOS userland components.
• Analyze system daemons, XPC services, framework APIs, parsers, and other undocumented components of the iOS/macOS system.
• Develop targeted fuzzers and harnesses.
• Develop reliable proof-of-concepts and undocumented techniques in controlled research environments.
• Research the practical impact of modern mitigations including PAC, MTE/MIE, sandboxing, hardened runtime protections, and related platform defenses.
• Develop custom tooling for binary analysis, instrumentation, tracing, fuzzing, and vulnerability research.
• Collaborate with other researchers on projects.

Technical Requirements

• Hands-on vulnerability research, reverse engineering, exploitation research, or closely related security research experience.
• Strong understanding of C/C++ fundamentals, memory corruption, and common vulnerability classes.
• Solid ARM64/ARM64e assembly and calling-convention knowledge.
• Practical experience with reverse engineering using tools such as IDA Pro, Ghidra, Hopper, or Binary Ninja.
• Experience debugging with lldb.
• Experience performing crash analysis without a fully capable debugging environment.
• Experience with Frida, DTrace, custom instrumentation, or comparable dynamic-analysis tooling.
• Ability to write research tooling in Python and at least one systems language such as C, C++, Objective-C, Swift.
• Understanding of Objective-C & Swift runtime behavior and iOS process architecture.
• Familiarity with fuzzing methodologies and experience building or adapting fuzzing harnesses.
• Ability to reason about the exploitability of a vulnerability rather than stopping at crash discovery.
• Being able to adapt to scenarios where the complete technical picture is not present.

Preferred Experience

Previous iOS or macOS vulnerability research.

Public vulnerability disclosures, CVEs, security advisories, conference talks, or substantial private research experience.

Familiarity with arm64e Apple specific internals

Familiarity with modern iOS exploitation mitigations.

Familiarity with jailbreak-era or modern iOS research tooling is useful, but not required.

Experience adapting research techniques between iOS releases and dealing

undocumented platform changes.

Experience with reversing Objective-C binaries.

Experience with iOS/macOS IPC mechanisms, such as mach messages, MIG, and XPC

What We Offer

Please note that some of the benefits listed below are applicable only to full-time employees in locations where CENSUS has a legal entity.

The chance to be part fast-growing, global cybersecurity company

A collaborative, purpose-driven team with a strong learning mindset

Competitive salary and benefits, such as but not limited to:

• Birthday Paid Day off
• Coffee, lunch and office snacks free of charge
• Private Medical and Life Insurance covering employees & family members
• Funded certifications & postgraduate programs
• Recognition programs including a welcome gift, a new year celebration gift, referral bonus and long service vouchers
• Exposure to international teams, leaders, and challenges
• Opportunities for professional growth, development, innovation, and more!

CENSUS is an equal opportunity employer. The Company does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, pregnancy, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, marital, or any other legally protected status. The Company also makes reasonable accommodations for disabled employees. Finally, the Company prohibits the harassment of any individual based on their protected status. This policy applies to all areas of personnel actions including recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, compensation, benefits, transfer, and social and recreational programs.

LI | Remote