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]

Late last year, Pegasus received all the buzz in the macOS/iOS scene. The spyware was used by nation state actors, targeting human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor. Developed by NSO Group in Israel, the malware is usually introduced via a malicious link through text message, and is capable of gaining remote kernel code execution on the target iOS device's before jailbreaking and installing itself onto the victim device. Pegasus leverages 3 vulnerabilities collectively known as Trident-- a webkit memory corruption, a kernel infoleak, and another memory corruption in the kernel. [Read More]