[csande17]

From the article:

> The part [of the comments in the released source] about the "pointer" containing authenticated, hasBKey, and hasDKey bits suggests that this code is dealing with authenticated pointers, although all the code that actually performs PAC operations has been removed from the public sources.

The researcher suspects Apple started with a version of the XNU code that supported the A12 logic, then removed the lines of code that actually performed the operations before publicly releasing it. In other words, Apple redacted security-related parts of the XNU source.

To me, at least, that's different from Apple creating a new XNU version that supports pointer authentication and not releasing it at all.