Unpatchable vulnerability in Apple M-series chips leaks secret encryption keys

Academic researchers have revealed in a paper published Thursday that a newly discovered vulnerability baked into Apple’s M-series of chips allows attackers to extract secret keys from Macs when they perform widely used cryptographic operations.
Dan Goodin for Ars Technica:
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The flaw — a side channel allowing end-to-end key extractions when Apple chips run implementations of widely used cryptographic protocols — can’t be patched directly because it stems from the microarchitectural design of the silicon itself. Instead, it can only be mitigated by building defenses into third-party cryptographic software that could drastically degrade M-series performance when executing cryptographic operations, particularly on the earlier M1 and M2 generations. The vulnerability can be exploited when the targeted cryptographic operation and the malicious application with normal user system privileges run on the same CPU cluster…
The attack, which the researchers have named GoFetch, uses an application that doesn’t require root access, only the same user privileges needed by most third-party applications installed on a macOS system. M-series chips are divided into what are known as clusters. The M1, for example, has two clusters: one containing four efficiency cores and the other four performance cores. As long as the GoFetch app and the targeted cryptography app are running on the same performance cluster—even when on separate cores within that cluster — GoFetch can mine enough secrets to leak a secret key…
The DMP on the M3, Apple’s latest chip, has a special bit that developers can invoke to disable the feature. The researchers don’t yet know what kind of penalty will occur when this performance optimization is turned off.
Readers should remember that whatever penalties result will only be felt when affected software is performing specific cryptographic operations. For browsers and many other types of apps, the performance cost may not be noticeable
End users who are concerned should check for GoFetch mitigation updates that become available for macOS software that implements any of the four encryption protocols known to be vulnerable. Out of an abundance of caution, it’s probably also wise to assume, at least for now, that other cryptographic protocols are likely also susceptible.

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