M5 kernel panic skmem_slab_free_locked in the presence of a network system extension

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I've seen a number of similar posts from other network system extension developers reporting kernel panics on M5 devices in macOS. These kernel panics occur when network system extensions are enabled and are not observed on earlier mac platforms or versions of macOS.

Reference: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/821372

In this post, it appears like Apple is aware of a problem as noted by Kevin Elliott in versions of macOS. Do we know if there is any way to work around this problem (short of not enabling a network filter) until a fix is available?

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Answer 1

JFreemanSecDev OP

2d

"panicProcessingFlags" : "0x0", "product" : "Mac17,9", "kernel" : "Darwin Kernel Version 25.4.0: Thu Mar 19 19:33:50 PDT 2026; root:xnu-12377.101.15~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6050", "socRevision" : "11", "panicString" : "panic(cpu 9 caller 0xfffffe003d586e8c): skmem_slab_free_locked: attempt to free invalid or already-freed obj 0xf1fffe2155039800 on skm 0xf5fffe2be9093600 @skmem_slab.c:646\nDebugger message: panic\nMemory ID: 0x1\nOS release type: User\nOS version: 25E253\nKernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 25.4.0

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Answer 2

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

2d

In this post, it appears like Apple is aware of a problem as noted by Kevin Elliott in versions of macOS. Do we know if there is any way to work around this problem (short of not enabling a network filter) until a fix is available?

I'm not aware of any workaround. The issue is pretty fundamental to the way packets are moved in and out of the kernel, so I don't think there's any way the filter could avoid it.

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Kevin Elliott
DTS Engineer, CoreOS/Hardware

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