Pacman (stylized PACMAN or PacMan) is an
exploit
Exploit means to take advantage of something (a person, situation, etc.) for one's own end, especially unethically or unjustifiably.
Exploit can mean:
*Exploitation of natural resources
*Exploit (computer security)
* Video game exploit
*Exploitat ...
that takes advantage of a
hardware bug A hardware bug is a defect in the design, manufacture, or operation of computer hardware that causes incorrect operation. It is the counterpart of software bugs which refer to flaws in the code which operates computers, and is the original context i ...
in the
speculative execution
Speculative execution is an optimization technique where a computer system performs some task that may not be needed. Work is done before it is known whether it is actually needed, so as to prevent a delay that would have to be incurred by doing t ...
function of the
Apple M1
Apple M1 is a series of ARM architecture, ARM-based system-on-a-chip, systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) Apple silicon, designed by Apple Inc. as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac (computer), Mac desktop compu ...
processors which was made public on June 10, 2022 by
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...
security researchers.
The flaw is in a hardware security feature called pointer authentication codes (PAC) and is believed to be intrinsic to the platform and unable to be patched.
The M1 was the first
ARM
In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between the ...
desktop CPU to implement pointer authentication.
Apple stated that they did not believe the vulnerability posed a serious danger to users because it requires specific conditions to be exploited.
An exploit would involve a combination of memory corruption and speculative execution.
See also
*
Side-channel attack
In computer security, a side-channel attack is any attack based on extra information that can be gathered because of the fundamental way a computer protocol or algorithm is implemented, rather than flaws in the design of the protocol or algorit ...
References
External links
*
Speculative execution security vulnerabilities
Hardware bugs
2022 in computing
Side-channel attacks
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