from France !
I just want to know if there is a tip for my old xperia s (LT 26i) to change this status ( bootloader unlock not allowed : NO !) to YES then i can unlock my bootloader at the end to install custom rom because there is more and more apps who didn't work at all !
i found old topics in xda (testpoint method, wotan and omnius server but it was only for 2011 smartphones). Now i was wondering if it's possible (if i find one with good status) to flash a TA partition ? In this case maybe you can send me one...
Anyway, i've never told about that when i've bought my phone, so my operator would be agree if you have to fix the phone...
I'm a tech guy with developper abilities so i can follow any procedure
Thanks for answering me because from now no one was able to give me a clear answer
Have a good day ( excuse my french, hope it's understandable ! )
Mr Niederlender
I have some experience with the Xperia bootloader, having an Xperia SP myself and messing with it.
Not so long ago, I stupidly flashed the simlock.ta file included in an .ftf file in Flashtool, thinking it would resolve my SIM-card reader issues. I've had an unlockable/unlocked bootloader up until that point. Upon booting the phone up again, the bootloader was locked, and the service menu said "Bootloader unlock allowed: NO".
I've tried messing with my TA partition and all kinds of simlock.ta files, but I've figured out with a friend of mine with an SP aswell, the TA seems to have a value, a sort of hash it checks the simlock section of the TA, and if it doesn't match, it activates a lockdown, disabling the SIM-card reading ability, disabling fastboot completely (booting normally to Android when volup + power or adb reboot bootloader). Literally changing the TA file and flashing it back won't work, the phone will be hard-bricked at that point and you'll need to use the testpoint found by taking the device's back apart, a hard-to-find tool to convert your TA backup into a SETool2-workable file and SETool2 to restore a backup of the TA you've made before doing any of the changes. (if you forget the backup, dead device)
Now I have done some research and found that 2011 Xperia devices had in their TAs a "Security Unit" section, which basically holds to-your-device-exclusive numbers that determine whether the TA is truly yours and whether the device boots. I'd assume the same holds true today, or at least for the Xperia SP, and if we could get an Xperia SP TA backup with an unlockable/unlocked bootloader, we could patch this TA file to have our own unique Security Unit inside and possibly have a bootable device with an unlockable bootloader with fastboot back, even if the SIM-card reading is gone.
This is, of course, definitely against what Sony would want us to do, and also not an answer that is a solution, but considering our warranties are over, the device has reached its end of support by Sony, and I've taken the device apart to be able to use its testpoint, I think this "hacky" method is still a theoretical solution.
Hope this helped you understand the situation better, and I'm also hoping there'll be someone that can help us in the future. This is such a great device with a custom ROM (specifically StryFlex Marshmallow is a beast on this device) and I'm hoping I'll one day see it working with it again.
TL;DR: Purely flashing a TA partition of another device hard-bricks the phone, possible (theoretical) workaround to hard-brick by patching the new TA to have our old Security Units section.
Simlock afterall does correspond to bootloader-unlockability, flashing a simlock file activates a sortof "lockdown" to SIM-reading, fastboot and bootloader-unlockability.
Related
Recently installed AutoHotKey to remap some keys in order to play a video game. It seemed simple/attractive enough at first. Was not really sure of how it worked but found the .chm file in the download which states in the first line of Usage & Syntax/Using the program:
AutoHotkey doesn't do anything on its own; it needs a script to tell it what to do.
Sounds 'secure' enough to me. Seems like mature software. Maybe overkill (now I know it certainly was overkill) but let's just see how it works.
My remapping was simple enough: change the AWSD keys for the LEFT-UP-DOWN-RIGHT keys. Script syntax is simple enough, just used an example that comes with the install files. Works essentially as expected. Got an annoying pop up after playing the game for a bit from AutoHotKey saying "you've pressed mapped keys 600 times" or something like that. Which was only a little annoying, so I ignored it the first few times. The game I play is real time so getting a even a 5 second interruption while in a match would mean certain loss, so I decided to just disable the script and uninstall.
Lo and behold: when I stop the script, the keys continue to be remapped. Was there some background process running? Maybe. I rebooted only to find that on my Windows login screen my keys continue to be remapped. Huh? Did AHK mess with some registry bindings or something?
I do not know that much about how Windows works, but my vague recollection is that registry bindings is something is active once the OS is active. I search on the web for say 1 hour before I give up for the time being and I end up activating the script again in order to write normally. This works as expected and I literally forget about it until any time I have to reboot.
Honestly a minor annoyance, but due to the world changing very quickly I lately have very few precious minutes that I can actually sit down on my desktop, whereas I used to be able to spend hours on this type of computer issue in order to get to the bottom of it. In other words, my current solution felt good enough. But not anymore. I think something more serious and possibly nefarious may have occurred. I don't want to seem dramatic but I just discovered something else a few minutes ago.
I have a Linux installation on another drive and I just happened to want to load it up after my last Windows blue screen (have gotten a couple of those lately, literally 2 in the space of 2 days and this had maybe only ever happened once before, like 2 years ago, so I am a already concerned about a possible deeper issue). My firmware/bios has a password and guess what I found when I tried inputting it: the keys were still remapped.
At this point I am at a complete loss. I didn't even think this sort of thing was possible. Some OS level software caused a change that was able to be reflected on the bios? Did it affect the keyboard driver? A driver that both windows and the motherboard bios use?
What else have I tried or looked at:
Device Manager claims my Keyboard has 3 instances of "HID Keyboard device". Not entirely sure why it shows 3. Properties show it has 2 driver files: kbdclass.sys and kbdhid.sys, which I suppose are some standard drivers. Not sure how to proceed.
My keyboard is inland (cheapest i could find at microcenter) i am not sure why I cannot find the website for that company. Found some drivers on reddit but they are on some sysadmin's google drive. I will download that exe when i am desperate...
UPDATE
I 'solved' the issue bye getting another keyboard (an old IBM KB-0225) and everything is now in order. I tried disconnecting the Inland keyboard and reconnecting, but after reconnecting I was still experiencing the same issue.
I don't know if I should close this question as there is no longer an issue, but I would like to see if anyone has any other additional theory as to why some software/driver changed occurred inside a keyboard device. As far as I knew, these devices have not internal memory other than possibly some logic gates.
There must be a background process running.
to check that:
note : For windows 10
On your taskbar, click on the ^ button (skip this step if there is no such button)
right-click on the sign.
click on "exit"
If the above steps do not work, try keeping a watch all the time, to see if you notice something uncommon.
I have a laptop with an integrated Smart Card reader (Broadcom). Applications I use insist on using specific Smart Card readers (USB tokens). Therefore I must insert that second SC reader in my system and I can't remove the first one.
The problem lies in a fact that those applications use only the default (first found) SD reader they find to query for Smart Card. And thus always report my SD reader as "empty".
I need to force them to read my "second reader" as it is my primary.
The question is: Is it possible to somehow select default card reader without disabling the other one? Is it possible to have Windows asking for which card reader to use?
I have Windows 10 1809 and I have noticed that the name of the default reader is dependent on which registry keys is alphabetically first under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Cryptography\Calais\Readers
I added a space to the beginning of the key to the one I wanted to be listed first and this caused it to sort alphabetically first and become the default.
I've devised "a hacky" solution that worked for me, but I'm sure that is not really the proper one. I've changed Groups field from SCard$DefaultReaders to _dummy_SCard$DefaultReaders, in this registry location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Cryptography\Calais\Readers\Broadcom Corp Contacted SmartCard 0
I've essentially disabled my Broadcom smartcard reader. This is working for Windows 10 64-bit and registry location is probably quite similar on 32-bit systems.
Note: Great utility that helped me was certutil -scinfo -v from the command line.
Due to my knowledge there is no clean centralized solution. The idea behind the PCSC architecture was, if several readers are connected, that you choose the one you want to connect to by identifiying the card you want to address. For the use case "more than one reader present, but application always wants a specific one, even without knowing something concerning the card" the application has to take care by itself. (Most achieve this by remembering, which one was chosen the last time.)
Let Say there are two identical systems. One of which has licence version of windows and I am ghosting entire drive into second computer's hdd. will windows ever come two know?
If that system is not connected to internet ?
Is CPU_ID unique Identifier or is it a cpu product ID.
I know mac address is unique in a system but I want to dig deeper in finding unique identifiers of system.
Take a look at this.
What should be the unique ID of a machine? Its motherboard ID? Windows Product ID?
I am working on visual C#.
The Kernel is compiled with specific drivers and the Kernel knows all the information about the hardware including their firmware version and hardware Ids. (one of the reason for BSOD)
If you install a windows and change the HDD to another same set-up, windows might try to repair and work. However if you have TPM chip and Bitlocker enabled, windows will ask you for the BitLocker recover key as soon as you've changed the hardware setup. That's because windows kernel knows each hardware and their ID's and therefor changes in them.
In order to answer you intended question, don't bother trying to prevent privacy you will never succeed and there will be someone to crack it. Instead spend that time on your actual product and marketing. People who want's to steal, they will steal anyway or won't use. Spend your time for those who would want to buy your product.
Having said that, move important code to web service if you really that much worried.
I live in Estonia where citizens, e-residents etc can use their ID card to prove identity by signing documents, open encrypted files that are intended for a specific individual and so on.
For that purpose we here use card readers (of course).
The problem is, unlike USB mice, USB keyboards and such things, to get it work I need first to restart my Mac. In other cases keychain won't see this device and I won't be able to do anything with it.
Is there a way to make my ID card work and seen by keychain without restarting my machine every time I want to use it?
Maybe there's a way to somehow restart just keychain or something.
All right, that was easy enough.
If somebody experiences kind of same issue, just reset NVRAM and SMC.
For a project of mine, I'd like to control (i.e. dim, set on or off) the little LED that sits in front of macbooks (and maybe other Macs, I don't know).
Unfortunately there's no API nor help about this on the internet - the only thing I could find was about dimming the keyboard LED. Apart from that, I only know that it would for sure use the SMC chip.
I'm OK if it needs root.
First thing, I must agree it is duplicate. But things have changed since 2010, and now it is possible to control this LED !
Take a look at xline. It's a project of mine, and it' s able to control the LED, through the SMC.
Just take a look at the source code.
BTW, I'm first opening a connection to the AppleSMC IOService using IOKit, then I'm setting the LSOO key in the SMC to 01. 00 shuts the LED down. And I use LSSB key to make it breathe, like when the MacBook is sleeping.