The propriety M1 Chip from Apple has already made its way to a number of the company’s products. This includes MacBooks, iMacs, iMac mini, and even the iPad Pro. Now, a new report has found that the iPad Pro with the company’s silicon has an irreparable security flaw.
According to developer Hector Martin (Via PhoneArena), the M1 based iPad Pro suffers from a vulnerability that exists on a hardware level of the M1. In other words, this is an issue that cannot be fixed through a simple software update. The Cupertino based giant has apparently violated an Arm architecture specification requirement as well. This means that there is no simple method of fixing the issue.
The developer further explained that the flaw basically allows two applications to covertly exchange data without using normal operating system features. While this is a vulnerability, it, fortunately, does not pose any serious security risks. Even in a worst case scenario this security risk would only enable advertisers for cross app tracking and can not be used by hackers to take control of one’s device or even steal sensitive information. Although, the flaw still violates the OS security model.
Furthermore, this issue affects every M1 device, which means it could even affect the iPhone 12 series as well since the A14 Bionic is based on the same CPU microarchitecture. The developer said that the only way of fixing this is to run the entire operating system as a virtual machine (VM). But that is not exactly a feasible repair to the issue. Hector believes that the flaw could even affect the next generation M1X chipset as well, but will be fixed in the following generation in the future.
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