Air Gapping a MacBook Air: The Great BCM15700A2 Mystery

Re:Air Gapping a MacBook Air: The Great BCM15700A2 Mystery by userbinator on Friday July 13, 2018 @11:16PM (#17528599)

We’re not sure exactly what the technicians did to remove the chip – heat gun, maybe? – but it came off cleanly and you wouldn’t notice it was missing unless you were specifically looking for it on the board.

Almost certainly, or more precisely, a "hot air rework station". For someone with experience, it only takes a few minutes to remove and replace BGAs with one.

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Re:Air Gapping a MacBook Air: The Great BCM15700A2 Mystery by eigenloss on Saturday July 14, 2018 @07:44AM (#17529929)

As far as hardware hacking goes, this is tremendously unimpressive work. They didn't even check for PCB antennas, which would have been trivial.

It would probably take six months, minimum, of real work to actually airgap a Macbook (with any level of confidence in its security).

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Re:Air Gapping a MacBook Air: The Great BCM15700A2 Mystery by monochromatic on Friday July 13, 2018 @11:55PM (#17528712)

And on top of that, it’s just about the only way it can be done non-destructively.

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Re:Air Gapping a MacBook Air: The Great BCM15700A2 Mystery by dfox on Saturday July 14, 2018 @10:51AM (#17530550)

Another (and for large-ish BGAs actually better) way is IR rework station.

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Re:Air Gapping a MacBook Air: The Great BCM15700A2 Mystery by brianpan on Saturday July 14, 2018 @02:51AM (#17529172)

I disagree. Hold my beer...

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