Leaked MacBook Schematics Reportedly Helping Repair Shops Offer Additional Services

BY Sanuj Bhatia

Published 11 May 2021

Apple Repair Program

Cyberattacks rarely benefit anyone, but the hacking group. Now, a report from Vice claims that leaked MacBook schematics are helping repair shops offer better and complex repairs to MacBook owners, thanks to detailed diagrams leaked online.

Last month, Apple’s prime supplier Quanta was hit by a cyberattack that saw detailed schematics of future MacBook designs leak online. The ransomware group, REvil, uploaded some of the schematics on various forums and websites as a ‘proof’ to the fact they had actually got hold of Apple’s important information.

Thanks to these detailed schematics, the repair shops that provide Apple-related repairs are able to now offer complex and additional services as they have now come to learn more about Apple’s internal design. The repair shops, up until now, have only been able to fix things like broken screens, damaged batteries, and other basic repairs.

But, with the help of this level of detailed diagrams, repair shops are able to fix motherboards and other parts — recovering someone’s data — which otherwise would have thrown away.

“Our business relies on stuff like this leaking,” Louis Rossmann, owner of the Rossmann Repair Group, which specializes in board level repair, said in a phone call. “This is going to help me recover someone’s data. Someone is going to get their data back today because of this.”

Apple does not provide repair manuals and schematics for its hardware, like motherboard and logic boards, forcing third-party repair technicians to look elsewhere. With the help of these schematics, repair shops can immensely improve their services, plus save some bucks for their customers who otherwise would have been forced to go to Apple and pay much higher prices for these repairs.

[Via Vice]