In practice, that means you can launch a full Kali Linux environment on macOS “Sequoia” 15 today, and you won’t need Docker Desktop when macOS “Tahoe” 26 ships this fall. Apple quietly slipped a game-changing developer feature into its WWDC 25 announcements: a native containerization stack that lets Macs run Open Container Initiative (OCI) images inside ultra-lightweight virtual machines. The strict VM boundary removes the “everything shares one VM” lateral-movement risk that plagues Docker Desktop on macOS, a point Apple emphasized in its WWDC session. With Apple promising continued open-source development on GitHub and Kali maintaining official arm64 images, the gap between Mac hardware and Linux tooling just got dramatically smaller. Every container gets its own minimal VM created via Hypervisor.framework, delivering stronger isolation than Docker’s single-VM model while keeping startup times below one second, Kali Team said. In effect, Apple has built a macOS analogue to Microsoft’s WSL 2, except each container lives in its own micro-VM instead of sharing one kernel. Containerization ships as a developer preview today and will be fully integrated when macOS 26 Tahoe lands, likely in September. Apple lists the issue as “under investigation,” promising full networking parity in Tahoe 26 betas. Cyber Security News is a Dedicated News Platform For Cyber News, Cyber Attack News, Hacking News & Vulnerability Analysis. Early models from Apple’s developer docs show sub-second cold starts and near-native I/O, thanks to per-container VMs that bypass heavy translation layers. Intel Macs are also left out; Apple Silicon and the upcoming Tahoe release are the official targets. Apple’s native solution slashes the overhead, cuts cold-start latency, and hardens isolation, all while keeping the familiar Docker-style workflow. The first launch prompts you to download a slim Kata Containers kernel; accept the prompt, and you’re ready to run. Seconds later you’re dropped into a Kali root shell, complete with the latest 6.12 aarch64 kernel. Networking in macOS 15 is still rough: containers sometimes launch without an IP address or lose DNS resolution. That makes Kali a first-class citizen on macOS for red teams and hobbyists alike. Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security.
This Cyber News was published on cybersecuritynews.com. Publication date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 09:30:17 +0000