Patchless Apple M-Chip Vulnerability Allows Cryptography Bypass

A research team disclosed a microarchitectural timing side-channel called "GoFetch" that leverages data memory-dependent prefetchers (DMP) in Apple M-series and Intel Raptor Lake CPUs to extract cryptographic keys — including from OpenSSL Diffie-Hellman, Go RSA, and even CRYSTALS Dilithium/Kyber. Apple published a developer workaround that enables data-independent timing (DIT) on M3 chips; M1/M2 require software-level mitigations. The PoC demonstrates real risk to cryptographic secrecy across hardware/software stacks and suggests similar behaviors may exist on other processors.