Recent content on Yifei Zhan's blog
A while ago, CommBank started asking for MFA confirmation on its mobile app for every NetBank login on a browser. Previously, there was an option to use SMS for MFA, which isn’t as secure as I would like, but it was at least usable. Since I’m switching away from Android to Mobian and won’t be able to use the CommBank app for much longer, I applied for a physical NetCode token.…
I recently replaced the screen of a Google Pixel 3A XL, the new panel is made by tianma and worked well under Andoird, until it doesn’t. On every boot up the screen will work until the phone went to sleep, and then the screen will stop responding to touch, until another reboot. After the screen became unresponsive, the rest of the phone would remain responsive during the locked state and…
I believe buying a Kindle in 2024 is a bad idea, even if you only intend to use it for reading DRM-free locally stored ebooks. Basic functions such as organizing books into folders/collections are locked until the device is registered and with each system update the interface has became slower and more bloated. Initially I purchased this device because Amazon book store isn’t too bad and…
The easiest way to change/set PIN for FIDO2 token seems to be with Chromium/Chrome: Plug in the token Launch Chromium, navigate to chrome://settings/securityKeys , or click Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Security -> Manage security keys Click Create a PIN , if you don’t have a PIN set already, a new PIN will be created, otherwise you will be asked to change the existing pin Alternatively you…
I’ve been daily driving the PinePhone Pro with swmo for some times now, it’s not perfect but I still find it be one of the most enjoyable devices I’ve used. Probably only behind BlackBerry Q30/Passport which also has a decent keyboard and runs an unfortunately locked-down version of QNX . For me it’s less like a phone and more like a portable terminal for times when using a…
The melting plastic and the smoke # The PinePhone keyboard contains a battery, which will be used to charge the PinePhone when the keyboard is attached. Althrough there are existing warnings on the pine64 wiki which sums up to ‘don’t charge or connect anything to your pinephone’s type C interface when the keyboard is attached’, my two pinephone keyboards still managed to…
I didn’t take as much notes on day 2 and 3, so I merged them into a single article. Wednesday, 17 Apr 2024 # Keynote: How Adversaries Use AI # Adversaries: Nation States Ecrime Hactivism Not always clearly separated LLM can help eliminate common language mistakes, perform better social enginerring Many adversaries are trying to integrate LLMs into their workflow, with varying results Time…
sched_ext - Write your own Linux thread scheduler in BPF # BPF made creating new scheduler simpler with strong safety guarantee to not break the system, the side effects of bad scheduler are confined. run a binary to enable your scheduler, stop the binary to revert to default Scheduling problem is now more complicated due to increasing complexity of workload/CPU design BPF provides reliable access…
Here you can find a list of links related to my topic which I find useful or just interesting. Meta # Info page https://2024.everythingopen.au/schedule/presentation/24/ Slides EO2024.Slides.exploring.mobile.linux.security.odp Recording XXX to be processed VerityMobile GitHub :: ZhanYF/veritymobile Demo # Access Measurements from Linux Userland Sign in to GitLab with fTPM-backed FIDO token…
As an OpenBSD package maintainer, I often need to watch for updates on packages I maintain. I used to do this using repology.org , which has the benefit of tracking package updates in many distros, but it can be unreliable for OpenBSD packages due to network delay and parsing problems. One better way to watch for upstream update is using OpenBSD’s portroach service, it monitors new upstream…
git-annex(1) is a versatile and cross-platform tool build on top of git, it can sync, backup, archive files and provides many useful primitives for building customized workflow and storage system, for example, by combining git-annex with gcrypt, it’s possible to fully encrypt data stored on a remote. Partially due to its versatility, it has a steeper learning curve than some other tools in…
Doing anything close to the kernel/bootloader on PinePhone almost always requires a serial cable, Pine64 store has premade serial cable available for 7$ USD, but making your own serial cable can be both cheaper and more flexible as a DIY cable can support multiple logic level and pinout configuration. Parts Overview # You will need: A 3.5mm audio cable, I got mine from a pair of broken headphone A…
Disclaimer # OpenBSD does not support PinePhone Pro yet and there are real risks involved in running it on your PinePhone Pro now, as such, I do not recommand anyone to do that. You might fry your device due to unsupported power management IC and in a worse case the battery might catch fire due to unconfigured/untested charging safety features. The purpose of this post is to document how to…
Basic Setup # All the tools we need for running VM are already packaged on Mobian, to install them, run: sudo apt install virt-manager then add your user to the libvirt group: sudo adduser mobian libvirt Reboot and then run virt-host-validate , it should indicate /dev/kvm exists and is accessible. Trouble with Heterogeneous Architecture # Trying to start qemu-system-aarch64 with -enable-kvm flag…
It’s been a bit more than a week since I start daily driving the PinePhone Pro with Mobian, some parts of my journey are documented here. IME and Keyboard # Both Phosh and Plasma provide their own work flow for setting up IME and adding extra language support, but so far I’m unable to get Phosh’s ibus-based input system to work with PinYin when using on-screen keyboard. I’m…
Setup Tow-boot # Mobian as of now requires Tow-boot bootloader to be installed first, u-boot is no longer supported. To install Tow-boot, see this document , I find it easier to plug in a usb cable to start the phone while holding down the RE button. Be mindful that there will be no graphical boot menu after installation, at the moment tow-boot menu is only available via serial connection.…
RetroBSD: a port of 2.11BSD Unix intended for embedded systems with fixed memory mapping. https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd/wiki This might be a good base to build on. DarkRiscV: a BSD-licensed RISC-V cpu core implemented in Verilog https://github.com/darklife/darkriscv It implements most of the RISC-V RV32E and RV32I instruction set (missing csr* , e* and fence* ) and works fine on many low…
Taken from ~/.xsession Disable system beep # xset b off Scrolling by dragging with the middle button and trackpoint # xinput set-prop "/dev/wsmouse" "WS Pointer Wheel Emulation" 1 xinput set-prop "/dev/wsmouse" "WS Pointer Wheel Emulation Button" 2 xinput set-prop "/dev/wsmouse" "WS Pointer Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5 xinput set-prop "/dev/wsmouse" "WS Pointer Middle Button Emulation" 3 Use Caps…