Cellular Baseband Security Research Intern

Apple's Security Engineering & Architecture organization is responsible for the end-to-end security of Apple products, which are in use on over 2 billion active devices around the world. That mission is at the heart of everything we do, and our team approaches it from the offensive side by finding and helping eliminate vulnerabilities across Apple's hardware and software ecosystem, before adversaries can exploit them.

We are seeking a motivated student for a Cellular Baseband Security Research internship. The team you will join conducts full-stack security research across all major wireless technologies, including cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thread and satellite, covering both SoC firmware and host-side services. As a member of the team, you will work on developing emulation and AI-assisted analysis tools that support cellular baseband vulnerability discovery, crash triage, and fix verification.

You would be joining an extraordinary group of researchers who bring a range of backgrounds and perspectives to the work, and who are driven by curiosity, passion and genuine engagement with what they do. If you have strong technical experience and a passionate desire to secure systems, join us in protecting all Apple users.

Description

Our group engage in various activities, including vulnerability research, binary exploitation, security tooling development, fuzzing, machine learning and more. By developing and harnessing state-of-the-art technologies, we amplify our impact on Apple's product security.

In this internship, you will explore new ways to research the security of cellular baseband firmware without depending on complex hardware and RF test setups. You will survey the state of the art in baseband emulation, firmware rehosting and AI-based security research, and assess existing internal tooling to find opportunities for improvement. Building on these findings, you will help design and prototype an emulation-based framework that combines traditional and AI-assisted analysis, with the goal of making vulnerability discovery, triage and fix verification easier and more scalable. You will work closely with experienced security researchers on technically challenging problems at the intersection of wireless systems, firmware and AI. Knowledge of Apple operating systems such as iOS or macOS is a plus, but not required.

Minimum Qualifications

Familiarity with cellular technologies, 3GPP standards (2G/3G/4G/5G) and baseband architectures

Solid understanding of low-level systems, including embedded OS internals and ARM architecture, with hands-on experience in C, C++ and Python

Ability to apply AI techniques and tools, such as LLMs, to security research and software development

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with tools and techniques for firmware emulation, rehosting and instrumentation

Experience in vulnerability research on wireless protocol stacks, including firmware, host-controller interfaces and over-the-air behavior, and familiarity with relevant vulnerability classes such as parsing, state-machine, downgrade and logic flaws

Familiarity with binary reverse engineering using tools like IDA and Ghidra, as well as the practical RF and over-the-air toolset, such as software-defined radio (SDR) and other equipment for capturing and injecting wireless signals