Fractal OS Lets Security Researchers See What Their CPUs Really Do (opens in new tab)  💻computer systems

security vulnerabilities. But what if those defenses could be removed? Doing so would offer a clear view of the chip running the OS. It would also expose hardware vulnerabilities the OS normally obscures.A new hand-coded OS, Fractal, provides that clear view. Built from scratch by researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Fractal is designed to probe the architecture of the chip that runs it. To prove that point, the OS, presented in May at the 2026...