A new kernel, or core program within an operating system, gives researchers a cleaner view of what’s happening inside a processor. Called Fractal and developed at MIT, the kernel has already surfaced previously unknown behavior in Apple’s M1.When security researchers want to understand what a modern processor is really doing with the kind of detail that determines whether attacks like Spectre and Meltdown are possible, they usually run their experiments on top of an operating system that was nev...