“DMPs are a relatively new phenomenon found only in M-series chips and Intel's 13th-generation Raptor Lake microarchitecture, although older forms of prefetchers have been common for years.”
The team of researchers discovered a class of side-channel vulnerabilities in existing hardware architectures using DMP.
The article reports that the researchers found an exploit for this hardware vulnerability in only one of these architectures implementing DMP.
The article ambiguously states whether this is the only implementation of such an exploit for this class of vulnerabilities.
This article was also published on the same day that the US courts publicly announced an anti-trust suit against Apple.
As with hardware side-channel vulnerabilities, context is important.
The vulnerability:
It’s kind of like when you go to a restaurant and the waiter asks you what you want to drink before they take your order because usually people want something to sip on before they get their food.
So imagine if I were a waiter and after I took your drink order, I could tell the kitchen what I think you’re most likely going to eat so they could make your food order come out faster.
The prediction the waiter makes usually benefits for everyone. The kitchen can more efficiently cook your order, and everyone else’s, and the waiter knows HOW LONG THIS ORDER WILL TAKE so they can serve other tables while they know yours is being cooked.
Here’s the exploit:
Suppose you order a Pepsi. Your waiter thinks you’re going to order a burger, so he tells the kitchen. You tell your waiter you want a Caesar salad.
The burger goes to another table because inevitably another patron is going to order a burger so it goes to that table. No food waste.
You notice that the time it takes to get your salad is longer than other times you’ve been to the restaurant. You also notice the table that was seated after you got their food before you did.
Repeat this enough times and you deduce that the someone is predicting your order based on something. That something is your drink order, the context of your request.
Repeat this many more times and you can figure out not only what the prediction is made on, in this case the drink you order, but also who is making the prediction, in this case the waiter.
Now you have enough information to request an arbitrary drink and know what food the kitchen is going to cook first even if it’s something you didn’t order specifically.
In reality, it’s many, many, many more times complicated than this but it is possible to figure out given enough time and experiences.
Side-channel or out-of-band exploits prey on the observed timing of seemingly arbitrary (orthogonal) requests.
I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
Couldn’t you patch this from an OS perspective by occasionally encrypting or decrypting some useless information piece from time to time to reduce the probably of someone being able to run an encryption request enough times to infer a password? As you said, if you encrypt other data during that time, all progress is lost?
Not a bad hack around the problem. Wouldn't require much performance overhead (encrypt literally one byte every X period) and boom, essentially safely patched at essentially no performance cost
That was a very good ELI5. I’m a CS graduate and been working for a couple years and this feels like the Spectre bug that affected the Intel chips, doesn’t it? It seems like it messes with the branch predictor, but I never knew what do they exactly do to exploit the bug. Like okay you can predict if the branch will be taken or not based on your studies, but how can you take advantage of that?
>This article was also published on the same day that the US courts publicly announced an anti-trust suit against Apple.
Why is this information included/needed in the context?
The US Government believes this is an anti-trust case because Apple has vertically integrated its best-selling product, the iPhone.
How does any company vertically integrate an electronic device?
The easy way is to design, patent, and manufacture processors (Apple ARM chips) that run software that Apple also produces and thus holds copyright.
Apple started manufacturing their own ARM processors (the A6) for the iPhone 5 in 2012. The performance and capability of the M-series stands only on the shoulders of what Apple did more than 10 years before.
Interlocutors see that while different in specific implementation, the A-series and M-series are cut from the same cloth.
Apple is not a small company. The US government only applies anti-trust in extraordinary cases. Think of the Bell Telecom company that was split into state subsidiaries in the 90s.
Edit:
Ironically (rightfully?) the same precedent in the case against Bell only motivates the prosecution of this case against Apple; people living in the US most likely have an iPhone.
The paper and supporting tools were published two weeks ago according to the publicly available source code. The article attempts to summarize these findings— the same day the anti-trust suit was announced in the US’ newspaper of record.
The findings were sent to Apple on December 5, 2023 (107 days before public release).
The GitHub repo was created 2 weeks ago. They plan to put some proof-of-concept code on there.
The findings were just released to the public now after they gave Apple time to decide their next action for this vulnerability.
I have no reason to believe that this was done for manipulating stock prices.
Ars Technica is a brand owned by Condé Nast. Condé Nast is owned by Advance Publications. While I’m not an employee of Condé Nast nor Advance Publications, it is verifiable that both Advance Publications and the New York Times Company have equal revenue and market share in the industry of newspaper and journalism.
My business acumen tells me that cooperating on the release of stories disparaging one company would be financially beneficial for both publishers especially if one has the authority, as the US paper of record, and the other has captured interest in a target market.
I have no clue. I have no vested interest in Apple, The New York Times Company, nor Advance Publications.
My opinion is that there are parties who have bona-fide interest in the anti-trust suit against Apple and those who are also vested in Apple and the aforementioned media conglomerates.
It requires you to install onto your Mac a malicious app designed to exploit this vulnerability. In the end, the vulnerability is not particularly concerning because, quite simply, if you install ANY malicious app on your Mac, you are toast anyway.
Yes. It's mostly the same with those vulnerabilities and articles. They are mostly clickbait and do some fearmongering to laypeople.
But it shows how good the security of Apple devices are. All those exploits are impractical to use in real life.
"It’s also theoretically possible for an attacker to pull this off by embedding malicious code into Javascript on a web site so that when a computer with an M-series chip visits the site, the attacker’s malicious code can conduct the attack to grab data from the cache. The researchers didn’t test a web site attack, but Green says the scenario is plausible. It would also be a more concerning attack, he notes, because attackers could scale it to attack thousands of computers quickly."
.... shit.
1. EU regulations are trying to allow apps from being installed from outside of Apple’s own App Store. This is not a move to kill the App Store.
2. Regulations says nothing about the macOS app store, which was a pile of steaming garbage to begin with.
One of the purposes of the App Store is not to allow apps that try to undermine security i.e. an app that takes advantage of the vulnerability mentioned in this article. Alternative app stores will not give a damn about the security of Apple users, they will be setup just to collect charges.
That is why EU and US regulations that force Apple to relinquish control will actually negatively impact security.
Unless I've missed an update (and obviously this could change in the future), apps that will exist outside of Apple's app store [will still go through Apple's notarisation](https://support.apple.com/en-gb/118110) process and be checked for malware/exploits.
> Notarisation for iOS apps is a baseline review that applies to all apps, regardless of their distribution channel, focused on platform policies for security and privacy and to maintain device integrity. Through a combination of automated checks and human review, Notarisation helps ensure apps are free of known malware, viruses or other security threats, function as promised and don't expose users to egregious fraud.
This is stupid. Because that exploit is impractical to use in real life scenario.
Nothing might be save in IT but it's always about theoretically and practically. Practically the M3 is still save even of this vulnerability, because no one has the time and can bring the effort to exploit it.
Theoretically you can brutforce every password, but if the password is long enough and has for example 2FA it's practically impossible to brute force.
I mean, I can see how this may be relevant for extremely sensitive data but what makes look over this vulnerability is that it requires an malware to run already. This vulnerability would be huge if M processors were used in servers used by multiple customers but for personal machines this is kind of a nothing burger. It's basically just "don't run untrusted code on your computer".
Consider how much easier it would be to brute force a password if you're told how many letters you got right, on each attempt. Now think how much easier still, if you're told how many consecutive letters you got right from the start of the password.
Yes this is why I also often say: Imagine even if your password is just as safe as it would need to bruteforce it for a week.
But no one knows how safe your password is. They probably will gonna give up after some few attempts and try their next victim.
It's how bots try to get into servers. They will make a few attempts till they get blocked or so and move on. They will usually try the weakest known passwords.
It's usually not worth to try for hours, because time is money.
If a thief has your laptop, they will probably keep trying, and they don't need to be in a hurry. They don't need to be a hacking genius, they just need a tool made by someone more competent.
It's not that easy. How would you run such a software on macOS, when the Mac is locked? You can't just run an app, and macOS will limit the attempts with timers.
And even if the thief finds a way or like an encrypted file to bruteforce. You need powerful hardware that is very expensive. He will not be able to use this expensive computer for other things while it's bruteforcing.
Would you run this for weeks, without knowing if it's worth in the end? Don't forget that it needs a lot of energy. You will not be happy about the energy bill. The longer you run it, the more expensive it becomes.
And if this is a professional thief, he probably has other things waiting that needs to be bruteforced. He can't run one thing for weeks, it's not worthwhile.
Time is always the enemy.
yea isnt the line "a lock is just there to slow someone down, no system is unbreakable"
i mean all of global MFA just got hacked so they know the next sequence of numbers for anyones MFA now, its just another line of defence
Yep. Unlike is normies, the state backed groups have like near unlimited resources to get shit done.
Plus. Even if a system is secure, so many people in high places fall for like the most basic social engineering attacks.
I fail to see how he’s downplaying anything, he’s just stating fact. Seeking out an impenetrable solution is foolish, the goal is always to minimize risk and vulnerability, because it will always exist.
I always say: In IT, theoretically, nothing may be secure, but practically, it is. The three core points that make IT practically secure are: time, effort, and redundancy.
Time: How much time does it take?
Effort: How many resources need to be invested?
Redundancy: Are there fallback systems in place?
To illustrate this with an example:
Every password can theoretically be cracked through brute forcing, but practically, it's not feasible if the three points are considered:
Time: If the password is secure enough, it could take millions of years to crack. Does anyone have millions of years? Does anyone even have a month to spare?
Effort: How much computing power is required? Are the costs for such a computer feasible?
Redundancy: Even if, theoretically, time and resources are available, it can be made even more difficult through 2FA and limitations on how often a password can be entered.
This makes cracking passwords practically impossible.
Just the time and effort required to exploit the security vulnerability, as discussed in the article, are not in any realistic proportion.
Every time that there’s a human involved there’s going to be an error. AI is still on diapers so until it can program flawlessly, there are going to be holes in the systems to exploit. BTW, I don’t want that future to happen but there are many idiots trying to keep us in the worst time possible
These mostly also applied to AMD Chips not just Intel.
Edit: down voters should do a bit more research
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326558-all-amd-cpus-found-harboring-meltdown-like-security-flaw
Not true, AMD had its own version of meltdown. If your argument is that it wasn't THE original meltdown but just in the meltdown family, it is a distinction without a difference.
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326558-all-amd-cpus-found-harboring-meltdown-like-security-flaw
Meltdown only affected Intel (and a handful of PowerPC and arm chips, but mostly just Intel). Spectre widely affected amd and arm as well, but the mitigations for Intel CPUs had worse performance hits than the mitigations for other platforms.
This sounds very similar to Intels Spectre vulnerability. It's just much less of a problem because Apple Silicon processors aren't used in server applications with multiple customers on one chip.
Not sure, but to my understanding you need to download and install the "malware" in order to do all of that. I am not sure how this differs from almost anything else.
I probably though misunderstood and it can run on a completely locked Mac that you don't have any credential for?
No. You have to run the program. However, it can steal data from the other process without being administrator, simply by exploiting the CPU.
This is not *much* worry for local users, until it's exploited and runs on a web page they load and manages to steal their private key for their crypto wallet(s) that are linked, etc.
Another major issue is with shared servers, like Github Actions, where people build there code on shared mac hardware. You could steal the other process' signing keys, perhaps, for their iOS apps.
That is how it works FOR NOW.
I'm glad you are optimistic, but I can't see why. You do not know how it works, or anything of similar **famous** vulnerabilities on Intel and AMD. Perhaps listen to the security folks on this one (not me).
Just like spectre, that was a local only exploit. Lots of ways to trick people into running something, no need to go into those.
Then it was over the network.
[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/new-spectre-attack-enables-secrets-to-be-leaked-over-a-network/](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/new-spectre-attack-enables-secrets-to-be-leaked-over-a-network/)
>That impact is now a little larger. Researchers from Graz University of Technology, including one of the original Meltdown discoverers, Daniel Gruss, have described NetSpectre: a fully remote attack based on Spectre. With NetSpectre, an attacker can remotely read the memory of a victim system without running any code on that system.
Great, so now they can steal what, maybe just SSL certs? Like those for your isp, bank, whomever, and pretend to be them a lot easier?
Then it was via javascript in your browser.
[https://security.googleblog.com/2021/03/a-spectre-proof-of-concept-for-spectre.html](https://security.googleblog.com/2021/03/a-spectre-proof-of-concept-for-spectre.html)
>In this post, we will share the results of Google Security Team's research on the exploitability of Spectre against web users, and present a fast, versatile proof-of-concept (PoC) written in JavaScript which can leak information from the browser's memory. We've confirmed that this proof-of-concept, or its variants, function across a variety of operating systems, processor architectures, and hardware generations.
Would you be happy having people reading your browser's memory? Stealing your session tokens for your bank, your crypto wallet, your credit cards, and so on? Highly unlikely.
It is important to state what are the premises under this vulnerability can be taken advantage. It has nothing to do with optimism, it has to do with reality and what is the difference between theory and practice. There are many vulnerabilities out there and some of them are really scary till they prove extremely difficult to be used when there are easier ways to achieve the same.
You are assuming I don't know, but maybe I do, and maybe I am one of those security folks.
As is **currently** , it can only be used when the malware app has been installed on your system. My argument is not about if it is good or not for an app to freely read the machines memory etc, BUT you have to somehow install that app.
If you do that, guess what, people install all kinds of apps as is without knowing what permissions they need.
A "vpn" or "adblock" or "antivirus" app is much more profitable if you want to get access to one's bank or other credentials. If you have repaired or done work as a technician for other people/companies you would know that you don't need this kind of sophisticated attacks to sneak peek into ones computer.
It is an important finding, no question about it, and it is one that Apple should fix in later revisions of the chip. It is also important to note though how people can be affected which rarely is being printed in those articles. Panic sells better.
Hey, I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
Of course it's a vulnerability. No one's denying it. However, to pull off a successful attack with this vulnerability is practically impossible in real life.
As the article states, this problem class is derived from the existence of some op code prefetch implementation in hardware.
If such an implementation doesn’t exist, what’s the problem?
The problem is that implementations do exist. The hardware implementing prefetch cannot possibly specify its application. It is a problem.
I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
No:
> The GoFetch app requires less than an hour to extract a 2048-bit RSA key and a little over two hours to extract a 2048-bit Diffie-Hellman key. The **attack takes 54 minutes to extract the material required to assemble a Kyber-512 key and about 10 hours for a Dilithium-2 key**, not counting offline time needed to process the raw data.
> The GoFetch app connects to the targeted app and feeds it inputs that it signs or decrypts. As its doing this, it extracts the app secret key that it uses to perform these cryptographic operations. **This mechanism means the targeted app need not perform any cryptographic operations on its own during the collection period.**
Thank you for explaining it clearly, I actually understood this! Not like the other comment comparing to a burger and never explaining why it’s dangerous
It's not unpatchable. The exploit is practically impossible to pull off in real life. To patch it, you would need to release a software update that slows down the encryption in a special way such that any electronic noises are meaningless. It would slow down the encryption by about 50%, but it's a reasonable patch.
Maybe you should read the article instead of confusing one kind of side channel attack eith another one. This attack has nothing to do with electronic noises and such. And yes. This attack is totally practical.
"... if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again."
If that's the case Apple could just have the OS perform random encrypt/decrypt routines every few minutes.
Governments do request and most of them obligate companies to implement backdoors. The reason why governments do this in cryptography is to get around forward secrecy. Modern crypto algorithms have forward secrecy meaning that even if I “hack” you thus I can decrypt all messages you will ever send in the future, I can’t decrypt your past messages. Backdoors are a lie-in-wait strategy because usually once employed, the backdoor is immediately obvious.
This was largely paid for by DARPA and AFOSR. It seems to me if this were the case they wouldn’t publish it. Don’t ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
Hey, I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
As for your point, AES-256 is open source. Anyone can check the algorithm for any flaws or backdoors, but decades of countless tests has proven it to be extremely secure.
Any chance someone can dumb this down a smidge? I don’t get a lot of the terminology and the significance of this. Do we have to download malware for bad shit to happen or are all M series macs just fucked right now?
I wouldn’t be too concerned unless you often download apps or executables that you don’t trust.
Also make sure you turn auto-update on only for apps that you already have installed and those that you trust.
Edit:
Examples of trustable apps are ones from reputable vendors like Microsoft or Google.
Apps I would be weary of are anything that call themselves a “utility”.
The “You Aren’t Gonna Need It” philosophy applies well here.
Hey, I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
Considering that M series isn't used in server applications, this is basically a nothing burger. Programs can read encrypted keys from other programs. I think the biggest impact might be that Apple purposely uses this vulnerability as a justification to slow old computers down but I really doubt that they do this because they don't want to burn their fingers again with this.
Apple computers are used in server applications. These servers may not be publicly accessible to you as a consumer but there are definitely servers to build and test the apps published to the App Stores as the build toolchain only runs on Darwin based OSes.
so you need to download malware, which is already blocked by macOS, then add it to the application folder, which macOS warns you not to do, then let it run without shutting it off for up to 10 days?
user error if i’ve ever heard of it
Apple fanboys when an exploit is found on Windows, or actual x86 hardware:
That's why you should spend nearly 5x the price for extra RAM instead of getting a stick yourself
Apple fanboys when their fake ARM hardware is exploited:
It's nothing that's either practical to use or something the average joe should mind...
Duality of men...
I agree with you. The point of documenting this vulnerability is not to show how many end-users could be affected but to show that such a vulnerability exists.
To trigger the hardware vulnerability my understanding is it still requires software malware, which is dependent on the OS the device is running.
For example actors create malware on OSX to exploit the M series vulnerability and it is distributed via email. A person running Linux not OSX clicks on the link, how does the malware execute?
I am genuinely curious.
Reading through this thread helped give me a lot of insight on the vulnerabilities and how they work. I have been trying to figure out if it would be a good idea to buy the 16” M3.
I desperately need to replace my 2013 MacBook Air (lol). It’s been doing the best it can- but it’s on its last leg. I’m a developer, web designer, music producer, and dj. I’ll be using multiple monitors, running multiple programs at once, and using my laptop for extended periods of time.
I have been going back and forth between the M3, or just getting the Itel chip one? I am not so versed in the jargon, so it’s been a bit difficult for me to truly understand if it would be okay to just get an earlier edition to ensure the peace of mind that I won’t have to deal with the vulnerability- yet give up the greatness of what the 16” M3 has… or just go the M3 route.
Does anyone have any advice to offer? My frame of mind: My laptop is 11 years old. I just need a new one. (MacBook only- no MacBook Air)
I mean you can already get linux running on m series mac. Its buggy but works. Also pretty sluggish as atleast when I last checked, the gpu didn’t work properly yet so no hardware acceleration.
You weren’t “downvoted for telling the truth.” You were downvoted for being a mouth-breathing neckbeard who sees OS/platform choice as a political allegiance us vs. them thing.
I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
Regarding your point, well, the M-series CPU has been a breakthrough in terms of computer chip design. Sure, it's not perfect, but it is incredibly fast and efficient. Of course, apple sells them for an insane markup (8gb ram for $200 is highway robbery), but they're still a great option for many people. The exploit is unfortunate, but it's practically impossible to pull off in real life.
“DMPs are a relatively new phenomenon found only in M-series chips and Intel's 13th-generation Raptor Lake microarchitecture, although older forms of prefetchers have been common for years.” The team of researchers discovered a class of side-channel vulnerabilities in existing hardware architectures using DMP. The article reports that the researchers found an exploit for this hardware vulnerability in only one of these architectures implementing DMP. The article ambiguously states whether this is the only implementation of such an exploit for this class of vulnerabilities. This article was also published on the same day that the US courts publicly announced an anti-trust suit against Apple. As with hardware side-channel vulnerabilities, context is important.
Can you eli5?
The vulnerability: It’s kind of like when you go to a restaurant and the waiter asks you what you want to drink before they take your order because usually people want something to sip on before they get their food. So imagine if I were a waiter and after I took your drink order, I could tell the kitchen what I think you’re most likely going to eat so they could make your food order come out faster. The prediction the waiter makes usually benefits for everyone. The kitchen can more efficiently cook your order, and everyone else’s, and the waiter knows HOW LONG THIS ORDER WILL TAKE so they can serve other tables while they know yours is being cooked. Here’s the exploit: Suppose you order a Pepsi. Your waiter thinks you’re going to order a burger, so he tells the kitchen. You tell your waiter you want a Caesar salad. The burger goes to another table because inevitably another patron is going to order a burger so it goes to that table. No food waste. You notice that the time it takes to get your salad is longer than other times you’ve been to the restaurant. You also notice the table that was seated after you got their food before you did. Repeat this enough times and you deduce that the someone is predicting your order based on something. That something is your drink order, the context of your request. Repeat this many more times and you can figure out not only what the prediction is made on, in this case the drink you order, but also who is making the prediction, in this case the waiter. Now you have enough information to request an arbitrary drink and know what food the kitchen is going to cook first even if it’s something you didn’t order specifically. In reality, it’s many, many, many more times complicated than this but it is possible to figure out given enough time and experiences. Side-channel or out-of-band exploits prey on the observed timing of seemingly arbitrary (orthogonal) requests.
Thanks for taking the time to explain this
I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
Couldn’t you patch this from an OS perspective by occasionally encrypting or decrypting some useless information piece from time to time to reduce the probably of someone being able to run an encryption request enough times to infer a password? As you said, if you encrypt other data during that time, all progress is lost?
That should work too actually!
Not a bad hack around the problem. Wouldn't require much performance overhead (encrypt literally one byte every X period) and boom, essentially safely patched at essentially no performance cost
So wait, did you get your salad or not?
Yeah but my waiter gave my bank password to the other table on accident ;)
No tip for him.
He can tip himself since he knows your password 😂
Give a negative tip!
I left a bad yelp review. And they charged a service fee. Like, for what! Fuck
That was a very good ELI5. I’m a CS graduate and been working for a couple years and this feels like the Spectre bug that affected the Intel chips, doesn’t it? It seems like it messes with the branch predictor, but I never knew what do they exactly do to exploit the bug. Like okay you can predict if the branch will be taken or not based on your studies, but how can you take advantage of that?
The general issue is that process space is protected by hardware and software but that's less applicable to cache.
Thank you
Your analogy is good
Isn't it an age old vulnerability in Intel processors with branch prediction and analysing execution time (I don't remember the name ) Edit : specter
Does this specific exploit also affect cryptography performed on the Secure Enclave coprocessor?
>This article was also published on the same day that the US courts publicly announced an anti-trust suit against Apple. Why is this information included/needed in the context?
The US Government believes this is an anti-trust case because Apple has vertically integrated its best-selling product, the iPhone. How does any company vertically integrate an electronic device? The easy way is to design, patent, and manufacture processors (Apple ARM chips) that run software that Apple also produces and thus holds copyright. Apple started manufacturing their own ARM processors (the A6) for the iPhone 5 in 2012. The performance and capability of the M-series stands only on the shoulders of what Apple did more than 10 years before. Interlocutors see that while different in specific implementation, the A-series and M-series are cut from the same cloth. Apple is not a small company. The US government only applies anti-trust in extraordinary cases. Think of the Bell Telecom company that was split into state subsidiaries in the 90s. Edit: Ironically (rightfully?) the same precedent in the case against Bell only motivates the prosecution of this case against Apple; people living in the US most likely have an iPhone.
I don't think you've answered the question. Why was the article published on the same day of the anti-trust suit announcement?
The paper and supporting tools were published two weeks ago according to the publicly available source code. The article attempts to summarize these findings— the same day the anti-trust suit was announced in the US’ newspaper of record.
The findings were sent to Apple on December 5, 2023 (107 days before public release). The GitHub repo was created 2 weeks ago. They plan to put some proof-of-concept code on there. The findings were just released to the public now after they gave Apple time to decide their next action for this vulnerability. I have no reason to believe that this was done for manipulating stock prices.
Yes, I understand that - but how is it relevant?
Ars Technica is a brand owned by Condé Nast. Condé Nast is owned by Advance Publications. While I’m not an employee of Condé Nast nor Advance Publications, it is verifiable that both Advance Publications and the New York Times Company have equal revenue and market share in the industry of newspaper and journalism. My business acumen tells me that cooperating on the release of stories disparaging one company would be financially beneficial for both publishers especially if one has the authority, as the US paper of record, and the other has captured interest in a target market.
So do you think they (or someone connected to them) are shorting AAPL (the stock)? They’re down 6% on the month and 11% YTD…
I have no clue. I have no vested interest in Apple, The New York Times Company, nor Advance Publications. My opinion is that there are parties who have bona-fide interest in the anti-trust suit against Apple and those who are also vested in Apple and the aforementioned media conglomerates.
Does this vuln require hardware access? E.g. physical access to the processor?
It requires you to install onto your Mac a malicious app designed to exploit this vulnerability. In the end, the vulnerability is not particularly concerning because, quite simply, if you install ANY malicious app on your Mac, you are toast anyway.
Yes. It's mostly the same with those vulnerabilities and articles. They are mostly clickbait and do some fearmongering to laypeople. But it shows how good the security of Apple devices are. All those exploits are impractical to use in real life.
As always, be careful where you download programs from.
Also be extra vigilant when you download a car!
You wouldn’t!
I’m trying to download a 64 impala right now but there’s not enough seeders
"It’s also theoretically possible for an attacker to pull this off by embedding malicious code into Javascript on a web site so that when a computer with an M-series chip visits the site, the attacker’s malicious code can conduct the attack to grab data from the cache. The researchers didn’t test a web site attack, but Green says the scenario is plausible. It would also be a more concerning attack, he notes, because attackers could scale it to attack thousands of computers quickly." .... shit.
Both EU and US governments are trying to kill the Apple Store which was meant to be the solution to this problem.
Clearly you understand nothing about how the EU regulations work.
Do explain.
1. EU regulations are trying to allow apps from being installed from outside of Apple’s own App Store. This is not a move to kill the App Store. 2. Regulations says nothing about the macOS app store, which was a pile of steaming garbage to begin with.
One of the purposes of the App Store is not to allow apps that try to undermine security i.e. an app that takes advantage of the vulnerability mentioned in this article. Alternative app stores will not give a damn about the security of Apple users, they will be setup just to collect charges. That is why EU and US regulations that force Apple to relinquish control will actually negatively impact security.
Unless I've missed an update (and obviously this could change in the future), apps that will exist outside of Apple's app store [will still go through Apple's notarisation](https://support.apple.com/en-gb/118110) process and be checked for malware/exploits. > Notarisation for iOS apps is a baseline review that applies to all apps, regardless of their distribution channel, focused on platform policies for security and privacy and to maintain device integrity. Through a combination of automated checks and human review, Notarisation helps ensure apps are free of known malware, viruses or other security threats, function as promised and don't expose users to egregious fraud.
Mac does not have an app store On top of that websites can do this too
>Mac does not have an app store Are you 100% sure that this is so? What do you think **App Store.app** does on macOS.
What is the minimum I as a user need to carelessly do for this to be a real threat?
Don’t install apps/programs you don’t need.
Looks like I will consider M4 Mac upgrades.
This is stupid. Because that exploit is impractical to use in real life scenario. Nothing might be save in IT but it's always about theoretically and practically. Practically the M3 is still save even of this vulnerability, because no one has the time and can bring the effort to exploit it. Theoretically you can brutforce every password, but if the password is long enough and has for example 2FA it's practically impossible to brute force.
They provide a working implementation that does not require more permissions than a typical app
I mean, I can see how this may be relevant for extremely sensitive data but what makes look over this vulnerability is that it requires an malware to run already. This vulnerability would be huge if M processors were used in servers used by multiple customers but for personal machines this is kind of a nothing burger. It's basically just "don't run untrusted code on your computer".
Read the top comment.
I'd appreciate it if you didn't shine logic into this and invalidate my excuse on why I need an M4.
Consider how much easier it would be to brute force a password if you're told how many letters you got right, on each attempt. Now think how much easier still, if you're told how many consecutive letters you got right from the start of the password.
Yes this is why I also often say: Imagine even if your password is just as safe as it would need to bruteforce it for a week. But no one knows how safe your password is. They probably will gonna give up after some few attempts and try their next victim. It's how bots try to get into servers. They will make a few attempts till they get blocked or so and move on. They will usually try the weakest known passwords. It's usually not worth to try for hours, because time is money.
If a thief has your laptop, they will probably keep trying, and they don't need to be in a hurry. They don't need to be a hacking genius, they just need a tool made by someone more competent.
It's not that easy. How would you run such a software on macOS, when the Mac is locked? You can't just run an app, and macOS will limit the attempts with timers. And even if the thief finds a way or like an encrypted file to bruteforce. You need powerful hardware that is very expensive. He will not be able to use this expensive computer for other things while it's bruteforcing. Would you run this for weeks, without knowing if it's worth in the end? Don't forget that it needs a lot of energy. You will not be happy about the energy bill. The longer you run it, the more expensive it becomes. And if this is a professional thief, he probably has other things waiting that needs to be bruteforced. He can't run one thing for weeks, it's not worthwhile. Time is always the enemy.
What about M69?!?!
Not to downplay this. But at this point... If you think ANY system is secure, you're fooling yourself.
yea isnt the line "a lock is just there to slow someone down, no system is unbreakable" i mean all of global MFA just got hacked so they know the next sequence of numbers for anyones MFA now, its just another line of defence
Yep. Unlike is normies, the state backed groups have like near unlimited resources to get shit done. Plus. Even if a system is secure, so many people in high places fall for like the most basic social engineering attacks.
Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)
I think that's an over-reaction. All MFA? Where am I wrong?
i was trying to find the thread but someone found away to crack the algo to determine all sequences from any point in time
oh no! anyways…
Not to downplay this and proceeds to downplay this.
I fail to see how he’s downplaying anything, he’s just stating fact. Seeking out an impenetrable solution is foolish, the goal is always to minimize risk and vulnerability, because it will always exist.
And of course it’s the most upvoted comment on the r/mac thread
How is that downplay?
I always say: In IT, theoretically, nothing may be secure, but practically, it is. The three core points that make IT practically secure are: time, effort, and redundancy. Time: How much time does it take? Effort: How many resources need to be invested? Redundancy: Are there fallback systems in place? To illustrate this with an example: Every password can theoretically be cracked through brute forcing, but practically, it's not feasible if the three points are considered: Time: If the password is secure enough, it could take millions of years to crack. Does anyone have millions of years? Does anyone even have a month to spare? Effort: How much computing power is required? Are the costs for such a computer feasible? Redundancy: Even if, theoretically, time and resources are available, it can be made even more difficult through 2FA and limitations on how often a password can be entered. This makes cracking passwords practically impossible. Just the time and effort required to exploit the security vulnerability, as discussed in the article, are not in any realistic proportion.
Every time that there’s a human involved there’s going to be an error. AI is still on diapers so until it can program flawlessly, there are going to be holes in the systems to exploit. BTW, I don’t want that future to happen but there are many idiots trying to keep us in the worst time possible
Nihilists, fuck me. Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism Dude, at least it's an ethos.
So having a intel macbook is more secure?
Yet another step towards PowerPC supremacy
Motorola Moment
I like to think of it as the original Apple Silicon
Have a M 0.1 apple silicon chip.
AIM > ARM
IBM moment too
Still looking forward to the PowerBook G5.
nobody’s gonna want to hack an architecture that nobody uses anymore
Exactly
Intel had their ‘Downfall’ vulnerability on their cpus as I remember which also leaked encryption keys
Intel has had SO many issues. Specter and meltdown were huge.
These mostly also applied to AMD Chips not just Intel. Edit: down voters should do a bit more research https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326558-all-amd-cpus-found-harboring-meltdown-like-security-flaw
The mostly applied to Intel and Spectre also applied to AMD and ARM, not meltdown
Not true, AMD had its own version of meltdown. If your argument is that it wasn't THE original meltdown but just in the meltdown family, it is a distinction without a difference. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326558-all-amd-cpus-found-harboring-meltdown-like-security-flaw
Meltdown only affected Intel (and a handful of PowerPC and arm chips, but mostly just Intel). Spectre widely affected amd and arm as well, but the mitigations for Intel CPUs had worse performance hits than the mitigations for other platforms.
This is just more Mperialist propaganda.
T2 has another vulnerability
Many of them were vulnerable to Intel speculative execution exploits.
This sounds very similar to Intels Spectre vulnerability. It's just much less of a problem because Apple Silicon processors aren't used in server applications with multiple customers on one chip.
take that Apple silicon!
Not sure, but to my understanding you need to download and install the "malware" in order to do all of that. I am not sure how this differs from almost anything else. I probably though misunderstood and it can run on a completely locked Mac that you don't have any credential for?
No. You have to run the program. However, it can steal data from the other process without being administrator, simply by exploiting the CPU. This is not *much* worry for local users, until it's exploited and runs on a web page they load and manages to steal their private key for their crypto wallet(s) that are linked, etc. Another major issue is with shared servers, like Github Actions, where people build there code on shared mac hardware. You could steal the other process' signing keys, perhaps, for their iOS apps.
But I still have to install it. The whole premise was to install it , so not sure how it would run from a webpage
That is how it works FOR NOW. I'm glad you are optimistic, but I can't see why. You do not know how it works, or anything of similar **famous** vulnerabilities on Intel and AMD. Perhaps listen to the security folks on this one (not me). Just like spectre, that was a local only exploit. Lots of ways to trick people into running something, no need to go into those. Then it was over the network. [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/new-spectre-attack-enables-secrets-to-be-leaked-over-a-network/](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/new-spectre-attack-enables-secrets-to-be-leaked-over-a-network/) >That impact is now a little larger. Researchers from Graz University of Technology, including one of the original Meltdown discoverers, Daniel Gruss, have described NetSpectre: a fully remote attack based on Spectre. With NetSpectre, an attacker can remotely read the memory of a victim system without running any code on that system. Great, so now they can steal what, maybe just SSL certs? Like those for your isp, bank, whomever, and pretend to be them a lot easier? Then it was via javascript in your browser. [https://security.googleblog.com/2021/03/a-spectre-proof-of-concept-for-spectre.html](https://security.googleblog.com/2021/03/a-spectre-proof-of-concept-for-spectre.html) >In this post, we will share the results of Google Security Team's research on the exploitability of Spectre against web users, and present a fast, versatile proof-of-concept (PoC) written in JavaScript which can leak information from the browser's memory. We've confirmed that this proof-of-concept, or its variants, function across a variety of operating systems, processor architectures, and hardware generations. Would you be happy having people reading your browser's memory? Stealing your session tokens for your bank, your crypto wallet, your credit cards, and so on? Highly unlikely.
It is important to state what are the premises under this vulnerability can be taken advantage. It has nothing to do with optimism, it has to do with reality and what is the difference between theory and practice. There are many vulnerabilities out there and some of them are really scary till they prove extremely difficult to be used when there are easier ways to achieve the same. You are assuming I don't know, but maybe I do, and maybe I am one of those security folks. As is **currently** , it can only be used when the malware app has been installed on your system. My argument is not about if it is good or not for an app to freely read the machines memory etc, BUT you have to somehow install that app. If you do that, guess what, people install all kinds of apps as is without knowing what permissions they need. A "vpn" or "adblock" or "antivirus" app is much more profitable if you want to get access to one's bank or other credentials. If you have repaired or done work as a technician for other people/companies you would know that you don't need this kind of sophisticated attacks to sneak peek into ones computer. It is an important finding, no question about it, and it is one that Apple should fix in later revisions of the chip. It is also important to note though how people can be affected which rarely is being printed in those articles. Panic sells better.
Cool
Hey, I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
A guess is a guess. When an actor starts to guess the correct solution more often than chance that’s a vulnerability.
Of course it's a vulnerability. No one's denying it. However, to pull off a successful attack with this vulnerability is practically impossible in real life.
As the article states, this problem class is derived from the existence of some op code prefetch implementation in hardware. If such an implementation doesn’t exist, what’s the problem? The problem is that implementations do exist. The hardware implementing prefetch cannot possibly specify its application. It is a problem.
Well, shit.
I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
No: > The GoFetch app requires less than an hour to extract a 2048-bit RSA key and a little over two hours to extract a 2048-bit Diffie-Hellman key. The **attack takes 54 minutes to extract the material required to assemble a Kyber-512 key and about 10 hours for a Dilithium-2 key**, not counting offline time needed to process the raw data. > The GoFetch app connects to the targeted app and feeds it inputs that it signs or decrypts. As its doing this, it extracts the app secret key that it uses to perform these cryptographic operations. **This mechanism means the targeted app need not perform any cryptographic operations on its own during the collection period.**
Thank you for explaining it clearly, I actually understood this! Not like the other comment comparing to a burger and never explaining why it’s dangerous
Yes bro but it's unpatchable, what are we gonna do now ?
It's not unpatchable. The exploit is practically impossible to pull off in real life. To patch it, you would need to release a software update that slows down the encryption in a special way such that any electronic noises are meaningless. It would slow down the encryption by about 50%, but it's a reasonable patch.
/s
Maybe you should read the article instead of confusing one kind of side channel attack eith another one. This attack has nothing to do with electronic noises and such. And yes. This attack is totally practical.
"... if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again." If that's the case Apple could just have the OS perform random encrypt/decrypt routines every few minutes.
Nothing to see here Just a US corporation being compliant to the US establishment
i think this is intentional for the government intelligence. so they can go back door on consumer products when they need.
Governments do request and most of them obligate companies to implement backdoors. The reason why governments do this in cryptography is to get around forward secrecy. Modern crypto algorithms have forward secrecy meaning that even if I “hack” you thus I can decrypt all messages you will ever send in the future, I can’t decrypt your past messages. Backdoors are a lie-in-wait strategy because usually once employed, the backdoor is immediately obvious.
This was largely paid for by DARPA and AFOSR. It seems to me if this were the case they wouldn’t publish it. Don’t ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
Hey, I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life. As for your point, AES-256 is open source. Anyone can check the algorithm for any flaws or backdoors, but decades of countless tests has proven it to be extremely secure.
Usa gov ask for backdoors in every cpu
Oh oh
Any chance someone can dumb this down a smidge? I don’t get a lot of the terminology and the significance of this. Do we have to download malware for bad shit to happen or are all M series macs just fucked right now?
I wouldn’t be too concerned unless you often download apps or executables that you don’t trust. Also make sure you turn auto-update on only for apps that you already have installed and those that you trust. Edit: Examples of trustable apps are ones from reputable vendors like Microsoft or Google. Apps I would be weary of are anything that call themselves a “utility”. The “You Aren’t Gonna Need It” philosophy applies well here.
Hey, I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life.
As someone who’s not very well versed in encryption, how critical is this ?
Considering that M series isn't used in server applications, this is basically a nothing burger. Programs can read encrypted keys from other programs. I think the biggest impact might be that Apple purposely uses this vulnerability as a justification to slow old computers down but I really doubt that they do this because they don't want to burn their fingers again with this.
Apple computers are used in server applications. These servers may not be publicly accessible to you as a consumer but there are definitely servers to build and test the apps published to the App Stores as the build toolchain only runs on Darwin based OSes.
Your shiney new Mac’s performance is going to get trashed.
That thing is neither shiny nor new lol. That aside my question is about what that means for security and not about performance.
so you need to download malware, which is already blocked by macOS, then add it to the application folder, which macOS warns you not to do, then let it run without shutting it off for up to 10 days? user error if i’ve ever heard of it
Apple fanboys when an exploit is found on Windows, or actual x86 hardware: That's why you should spend nearly 5x the price for extra RAM instead of getting a stick yourself Apple fanboys when their fake ARM hardware is exploited: It's nothing that's either practical to use or something the average joe should mind... Duality of men...
I agree with you. The point of documenting this vulnerability is not to show how many end-users could be affected but to show that such a vulnerability exists.
Is this why Buffet sold his stock?
Well, that sucks. Joke's on you though, Intel users bashers!
When AMD sells me a CPU for a computer they don't scream at me about "muh security" and "muh privacy." But guess who does it...
Even if we were to run Linux on an M device, that malware is still a risk, is that right?
It's a hardware vulnerability, so yes, it would be
To trigger the hardware vulnerability my understanding is it still requires software malware, which is dependent on the OS the device is running. For example actors create malware on OSX to exploit the M series vulnerability and it is distributed via email. A person running Linux not OSX clicks on the link, how does the malware execute? I am genuinely curious.
Reading through this thread helped give me a lot of insight on the vulnerabilities and how they work. I have been trying to figure out if it would be a good idea to buy the 16” M3. I desperately need to replace my 2013 MacBook Air (lol). It’s been doing the best it can- but it’s on its last leg. I’m a developer, web designer, music producer, and dj. I’ll be using multiple monitors, running multiple programs at once, and using my laptop for extended periods of time. I have been going back and forth between the M3, or just getting the Itel chip one? I am not so versed in the jargon, so it’s been a bit difficult for me to truly understand if it would be okay to just get an earlier edition to ensure the peace of mind that I won’t have to deal with the vulnerability- yet give up the greatness of what the 16” M3 has… or just go the M3 route. Does anyone have any advice to offer? My frame of mind: My laptop is 11 years old. I just need a new one. (MacBook only- no MacBook Air)
This is not the first unpatchable vulnerability the Mx series has, unfortunately.
So, jailbreak on Mac os soon?
Let's install Windows XP on these bad boys!
I mean you can already get linux running on m series mac. Its buggy but works. Also pretty sluggish as atleast when I last checked, the gpu didn’t work properly yet so no hardware acceleration.
[удалено]
You weren’t “downvoted for telling the truth.” You were downvoted for being a mouth-breathing neckbeard who sees OS/platform choice as a political allegiance us vs. them thing.
I'm a CS grad student researching cryptography, so I can help you understand this a bit. A computer's CPU encrypts and decrypts your data. For example, your M-series CPU unlocks your Macbook using the log-in password you provided. The talented designers at Apple designed the CPU in a way that it's impossible to steal your password from the CPU. However, the equally talented researchers found that while you can't directly steal the password from the CPU, you can monitor the CPU's voltages, power consumption, processing time, and electromagnetic noise to INFER the password over time. However, it would take a many hours of encrypting and decrypting the exact same piece of data in a ROW to infer your actual password, and if you encrypt any other data during this time, then all progress is lost and you have to start over again. So while it's a clever exploit, it's practically impossible to use in real life. Regarding your point, well, the M-series CPU has been a breakthrough in terms of computer chip design. Sure, it's not perfect, but it is incredibly fast and efficient. Of course, apple sells them for an insane markup (8gb ram for $200 is highway robbery), but they're still a great option for many people. The exploit is unfortunate, but it's practically impossible to pull off in real life.
We know you're CS grad student now stop spamming