We’re now over three years into one of Apple’s biggest ever gambles. At the tail end of 2020, the company made a major architectural change, moving from building computers that use Intel-built x86 chips to ARM-based chips of its own design.
As soon as the first M1 Macs launched, the reason for the change became clear. The new system on a chip (SOC) was dramatically faster, ran cooler and consumed less energy than anything Intel could offer – and sales quickly soared.
However, this wild success has just become a little bit awkward. A new hardware vulnerability has emerged, named GoFetch, which can conceivably compromise the millions of devices around the world that use these chips. And, even worse, the problem is thought to be unpatchable.
Side-channel attacks
How big a deal is this vulnerability in Apple’s processors? “There is always a trade-off between security and performance,” said Jeremy
