Did a little digging on this - for the average person it’s not going to be a big deal.
This is once again some hacks getting their masters thesis by writing papers on stating the obvious.
What they’ve “proven” is that they can figure out things about the physical characteristics about your computer - like memory speed, CPU type, power consumption, etc via the scary term “side-channel attack”
https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-side-channel-attack/
This isn’t all that complex - regardless of VPN and browser security you STILL pull down web page info from the server. CSS still has some scripting features (for stuff like animation and scaled scrolling) so stick a little processing for animation in there that changes how things are loaded and voila, the server knows some things about the computer it sends data too.
At BEST - the most information they’re going to get from you is a hardware fingerprint - but that’s not going to mean anything because all MacBook 13” M1s are the same hardware!!!
In an spy situation it gets a little more serious because you can figure out a profile and maybe usage patterns on a group or business and focus any hacking efforts - but in the grand scheme of things it’s nothing to worry about.
Kinda what I figured. It’s also FUD Season, especially that part about Apple’s M1 chips perhaps being more vulnerable. Apple is soon to announce new iMac and other hardware which is always preceded by a FUD Season.