My personal fight against the modern laptop
linux conf au 2017 - Hobart, Australia2 HN recommenders · 2017–2025
121K views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2017-01-22
Hamish Coleman describes reverse engineering the keyboard controller in a Thinkpad and reflashing it with custom firmware. He covers how Lenovo secures its firmware, and his ongoing work on the protocol between the BIOS and the vendor flash tool.
HN people cite it as an approachable, hands-on introduction to hardware and firmware reverse engineering, and as the author's own account of the Thinkpad keyboard patch effort.
6:538-bit computer update
Ben Eater
22:21Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!
suckerpinch
27:25“Hello, world” from scratch on a 6502 — Part 1
Ben Eater
32:35Detergent packs are kinda wishy-washy (Dishwashers Explained)
Technology Connections
51:32Behind the Scenes of iOS Security
Black Hat
12:01Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea
Tom Scott
18:28The Antique Toaster that's Better than Yours
Technology Connections
51:22USENIX Security '18-Q: Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is Possible?
USENIX
3 comments from Hacker News
For those who might want a somewhat indirect introduction to radare... Here's something from Linuxconf.au and hacking Thinkpads: [VIDEO]
I found this video on hacking old Thinkpad keyboards onto new Thinkpad models interesting. Required a lot of reverse engineering due to how the firmware in the Thinkpad maps keys: [VIDEO]
That is the general nature of reverse engineering efforts, but this one has been documented enough that you don't need to blindly trust completely random executables or code from strange places. You can manually recreate the process of building a patch for the embedded controller instead of just following instructions: [LINK] . Here's the presentation by the author himself at linux.conf.au (what used to be the biggest local Linux conference for those of us in Australia and NZ): [VIDEO] . This is of course not supported by Lenovo. Unlocking the BIOS is definitely more like what you described. It's the price to pay for freely playing around with processor power limits, getting AES-NI instruction set support, etc. I have not checked since 2019, so there might be a clearer way.