Penetration testing has become a foundational skill that everyone in the tech industry should master by 2026. As the vibes coding expands exponentially, many developers neglected to overlook security. Consequently, mastering pentest could become big advantage for you.

Since Apple introduced Apple Silicon chips, MacBooks now use a different processor architecture instead of the older Intel-based system. This change brought major improvements, especially better speed and performance.

However, it also created new challenges. Users can no longer install standard Ubuntu or DVWA ISO files without first checking whether they support the correct architecture. On Apple Silicon Macs, ARM64 versions are required for the software to run properly. Unfortunately, many open-source projects still do not provide native ARM-compatible images or applications.

Fortunately, as technology continues to improve, solutions for these limitations are also becoming available. In this article, I will share several tips on how to build a reliable penetration testing environment on a Mac, especially for devices using the M1 chip.