Tom’s Hardware: World’s First Apple M1 Data Recovery, Firm Claims

Oratorical flourishes aside, this is an interesting claim because a Mac’s SSD is pretty hard to get to for the average man with a screwdriver. Not only is the data in an M1 Mac encrypted by default, the SSD controller is embedded inside the M1 CPU as part of the SoC design — meaning that if that chip is damaged, there may be no way in. This is where the transplant technique comes in, but there’s another problem: the devices employ high-security protocols in which specific components need to remain connected to each other via the logic board for data to be accessible.