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macOS 26 (Tahoe): NACKeyEstablishment PAC-protected, mac-registration-provider broken #21

Description

@rundfunk47

mac-registration-provider was just archived (Apr 1, 2026). On macOS 26.3.1 (25D2128, arm64e), NACKeyEstablishment and NACSign crash with SIGABRT because they're now PAC-protected trampolines (braa x9, x17) instead of direct callable functions.

NACInit at offset 0x664de8 still works (sanity check returns -44023, full init with cert works). But KeyEstablishment at 0x75e91c is a PAC dispatch stub that crashes when called via function pointer cast.

Impact

  • Cannot generate validation data on macOS 26
  • Blocks all non-relay registration flows
  • mac-registration-provider (now archived) cannot be fixed upstream

How does OpenBubbles handle validation data generation on macOS 26? Does the app use a different mechanism than mac-registration-provider's direct NAC function calls?

Workaround attempted

  • ptrauth_sign_unauthenticated — same crash
  • Calling functions adjacent to NACInit — wrong signatures
  • IDSValidationSession ObjC runtime — requires entitlements, crashes without them

Binary info

  • identityservicesd SHA256: 3a674a0f5dcb05b404a3042d56c637b24466307dd608c790bef2f666d0ff927c
  • NACInit: 0x664de8 (32KB function, works)
  • IDSProtoKeyTransparencyTrustedServiceReadFrom: 0x0cea08

Activity

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