To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system

MIT researchers developed Fractal, a custom operating system kernel that provides unprecedented visibility into processor behavior by eliminating operating system noise from measurements, enabling discovery of previously unknown security vulnerabilities like "Phantom" attacks on Apple's M1 chip. This breakthrough demonstrates that rigorous hardware-level analysis requires purpose-built tools rather than patching general-purpose operating systems, fundamentally changing how security researchers can detect and prevent speculative execution attacks. For IT organizations, this signals that current vulnerability assessment practices may miss critical exploits, and security strategies must evolve as researchers gain deeper chip-level visibility into potential attack surfaces.