First public macOS kernel memory corruption exploit demonstrated on Apple M5
Tags Infrastructure · OSS
Security researchers at Calif, working with Mythos Preview, published the first public kernel memory corruption exploit targeting Apple's M5 chip. Apple spent five years building hardware and software mitigations to make memory corruption exploits dramatically harder, but the team built a working exploit in five days. The research demonstrates that Apple's latest custom silicon, despite its advanced security architecture, remains vulnerable to sophisticated kernel-level attacks.
Technical significance
Apple's M-series chips have been considered among the most secure consumer processors, with hardware-level mitigations like pointer authentication and memory tagging. A working kernel exploit on the M5 in just five days suggests the security community is rapidly developing techniques to bypass these defenses. This has implications for enterprise security models that rely on Apple silicon's security guarantees.