We are experiencing the same issue in our enterprise environment. Our MacBook Pro M5 Pro test unit running macOS 26.4.1 (25E253) is intermittently kernel panicking, primarily after sleep/wake transitions. The panicked process is com.cisco.anyconnect.macos.acsoc — the Cisco Secure Client Network Extension content filter. The panic type is a Kernel Tag Check Fault (ARM MTE tag mismatch), and the backtrace points to the NEFilterExtensionProviderContext dispatch queue during packet processing.
What strengthens the N1 chip correlation on our end is that we are also validating the MacBook Air M5 in parallel — same macOS 26.4.1, same Cisco Secure Client, same SentinelOne EDR, same network extension stack — and we have observed zero kernel panics on the Air. The Air does not have the N1 wireless chip. Our panic logs on the M5 Pro contain DART references to dart-apcie0 and Centauri wireless silicon (AppleCentauriAlpha, AppleCentauriBeta, AppleCentauriControl), which are not present on the Air.
We have placed a deployment hold on all MacBook Pro M5 Pro hardware in our environment until this is resolved. MacBook Air M5 deployment is proceeding as planned with no issues.
Curious on timing — is there any indication whether a fix will make it into 26.5 GA, or are we looking at a supplemental 26.4.x update? Any visibility would help us plan our hardware rollout accordingly.
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Networking
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