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Upgrading an M4 Pro Mac mini's storage for half the price

(www.jeffgeerling.com)
423 points speckx | 1 comments | 11 Jul 25 14:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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porphyra ◴[11 Jul 25 15:23 UTC] No.44533210[source]▶
There are also shops in China that will upgrade the SSD in a mac mini for cheaper and they will do all the work of the DFU restore etc.
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ttul ◴[11 Jul 25 15:24 UTC] No.44533225[source]▶
And when the machine arrives back in the States, it even has a fresh CPC ROM soldered onto the back of the SOC!
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hollerith ◴[11 Jul 25 15:38 UTC] No.44533397[source]▶
I'm not a security researcher, but I get the distinct impression that Apple's hardware security is good enough that if you actually had an evil-maid attack on the M4 Pro Mac mini, it would instantly become the hottest news in the security community.
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throwaway31131 ◴[12 Jul 25 05:39 UTC] No.44539601[source]▶
Umm… what’s an evil-maid attack? Sounds like a b-horror film. :)
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1. adrian_b ◴[12 Jul 25 10:06 UTC] No.44540824[source]▶
An "evil-maid attack" is the name used for the case when the attacker has unrestricted direct physical access for a short time to the computer, like it may be the case for the personnel who cleans the office or home in the absence of the computer users (or as it may be the case at some border control points if a laptop/smartphone is taken by the authorities for a checking done in another room, where the owner is not present).

With direct physical access, a lot of things can be done which cannot be done remotely, e.g. attempting to boot from an external device, possibly using hardware fault injections to bypass protections against that, attempting to read data that has not completely decayed from the DRAM modules, replacing some hardware component or inserting an extra component that would enable spying in the future, making copies of an encrypted SSD/HDD with the hope that after making other copies of it in the future that will enable breaking the encryption , if that is done using an encryption mode that does not protect against this kind of attack, and so on.