Debugging macOS Kernel using VirtualBox

Update: In the HN discussion, awalton mentioned you can set CPUID flags in VMWare. Simply adding cpuid.7.ebx = "-----------0--------------------" to the vmx file will disable SMAP. Late last year, I upgraded my old MBP to the 2016 model with a Skylake processor. As I was debugging a kernel exploit, it turned out that SMAP was enabled inside my VMWare Fusion VM. I wanted to avoid dealing with SMAP, but couldn't figure out how to disable it in Fusion. [Read More]