Apple's press release mentions Memory Integrity Enforcement, but seems to be only for the M5 Pro/Max. In another document, Apple indicates the base M5 also supports Memory Integrity Enforcement. I wonder why there is an inconsistent messaging regarding this feature. So is macOS officially supporting this feature now?
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Is Memory Integrity Enforcement officially enabled on the M5 series now?
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"Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), is a comprehensive memory safety defense for Apple platforms available on A19 and M5 processors or later"
Depends on what OS you run since only Tahoe support MIE
So only macs with M5 family+Tahoe and the upcoming Macbook Neo if it has 19 and not a18
So only macs with M5 family+Tahoe and the upcoming Macbook Neo if it has 19 and not a18
chrfr
macrumors G5
All products using the M5 require 26. The new M5 Pro/Max computers will certainly require at least 26.3.
macaddiict
macrumors 6502
And MIE on macOS 26+ w/M5 will require the developers to update their app with Extended Security to enable memory tagging, so I can't see a ton of apps doing this.
However, knowing that Passwords.app likely will be one of the shipping 70+ components in macOS Tahoe with MIE enabled makes the feature seem very worthwhile.
However, knowing that Passwords.app likely will be one of the shipping 70+ components in macOS Tahoe with MIE enabled makes the feature seem very worthwhile.
No, it’s a way to ensure that memory is used by software as was intended by the developers. Historically, working with memory has been error-prone, since easy-to-overlook mistakes could result in code that can read or write data outside the intended memory locations. The big implication of this is security, as hackers use advantage of these bugs to access secret data or even take control of the software. MTE is a hardware safeguard to prevent this.
macaddiict
macrumors 6502
No but you can use ECC as a stepping block to understand MIE:
ECC uses an extra chip on RAM to compute & check a checksum value to be sure data is accurate
MIE uses a specific value assigned to each memory address to unlock or provide access to provided memory addresses only to the app who was given the memory; if a process tries to access memory with the wrong "checksum" or one that has expired, it is denied.
