Apple Made Sudden Security Changes to its Chips in Fall 2020
Monday April 12, 2021 8:15 am PDT by Hartley Charlton
Apple made unusual mid-production hardware changes to the A12, A13, and S5 processors in its devices in the fall of 2020 to update the Secure Storage Component, according to Apple Support documents.
According to an Apple Support page, spotted by Twitter user Andrew Pantyukhin, Apple changed the Secure Enclave in a number of products in the fall of 2020:
Note: A12, A13, S4, and S5 products first released in Fall 2020 have a 2nd-generation Secure Storage Component; while earlier products based on these SoCs have 1st-generation Secure Storage Component.
Apple updates its Platform Security Guide with details about M1 Macs
The guide officially says Apple will stop supporting kernel extensions in future versions of macOS
Apple rolled out an updated version of its ‘Platform Security Guide,’ which offers a comprehensive overview of the latest security changes and improvements across the company’s software ecosystems.
The guide details changes across iOS 14, iPadOS 14, macOS, Big Sur, tvOS 14, watchOS 7 and more.
MacRumorspublished a breakdown of the changes to the guide. For example, the guide includes security details about Safari’s Password Monitoring feature. Available on iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur, Password Monitoring automatically checks if saved passwords may have been exposed in a data breach.
A security research team at Red Canary stumbled on new malware infecting Macs. About 30,000 Macs have been infected by the malware. Apple has revoked the developer certificate and says that no new Macs have been infected
M1 Macs have another hidden boot mode
However sparse Apple’s documentation might have become, when it does explain things properly, it’s amazing what’s revealed in the detail. One document every serious Mac user should read and refer to repeatedly is the Platform Security Guide, which Apple has just revised to give all the gory details of how M1 Macs start up. In the course of doing that, it reveals that these new models have a boot mode which doesn’t appear to be documented anywhere else, but which could prove a Mac-saver: Fallback Recovery OS.
If you need your M1 Mac to enter 1 True Recovery (1TR), Recovery Mode, but that fails, there’s a second copy of the software required for 1TR “for resiliency”. To boot into that, instead of just holding the Power button until 1TR starts loading, you should “double-press and hold the power button”, according to the guide.