Coupled with the fact that M1 Macs have to be run at a reduced level of security to be able to load third-party kernel extensions, almost all software and hardware which used to rely on kernel extensions should now be switching to Apple’s new alternatives such as system extensions.
However, it has only been in the last year or so that Apple has provided sufficient support for this to be feasible. For those who develop malicious software, they’re the next best thing to installing their own malicious kernel.įor some years now, Apple has been encouraging third-party developers to move away from kernel extensions to equivalents which run at a user level rather than in Ring 1.
With those comes the price that kernel extensions can readily cause the kernel to panic, can conflict with one another and with macOS, and most of all are a security nightmare. They enable Apple and third-party developers to support the rich range of hardware available both within and connected to Macs, to add new features such as software firewalls and security protection, and to modify the behaviour of macOS by rerouting sound output to apps, and so on. Kernel extensions have long been one of the most powerful and dangerous features of macOS. Apple therefore changed to prelinking the kernel with all its extensions, which makes loading much quicker but puts kernel extensions in an even more privileged position.
#Veracrypt mac m1 mac os x#
Big Sur’s kernel has just over 550 standard kernel extensions which extend it to make everything else work.Įarly versions of Mac OS X used to load each of their kernel extensions individually, which made the boot process interminably long. Kernel extensions operate at a close level of privilege (Ring 1) so that they too can make hardware such as ethernet and Thunderbolt ports work, and they’re loaded once the kernel itself is running, before the rest of macOS. The kernel itself runs at a highly privileged level, giving it most direct access to resources such as the processor, memory and hardware devices, often known as Ring 0. From the outset, Mac OS X and macOS have been designed around a relatively small kernel which is given additional capabilities by kernel extensions.
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