Erasing the Content of Flash ROM

Posted: November 18th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: IT Related | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Hi all especially HTC users.

This HOWTO gonna cover steps that are needed to erase the content of flash ROM for HTC device to prevent the automagic hard reset when a cooked ROM crashed.

I believe that you are now running a cooked ROM on your device (Huh? Still running on the original ROM? Come on.. Dont be such a lame goat) and for those who already flash their device for several times (with several different ROMs), you might have the auto hard reset problem that gonna occur almost every day. Besides data loss, it will also cause you headache and hair loss 😛

There are several reasons that gonna lead to this problem (please leave comment if you found that I’m wrong) and they are:

  1. Installed a corrupted ROM
  2. Flash the radio ROM after the OS ROM
  3. Install the Hard-SPL without flashing the radio and OS ROM (after that)
  4. Memory Bad Blocks

If you think that reason no 1,2 and 3 is not related to you, the only way to solve your problem is by wiping/erasing the content of the entire ROM before you flash it back into the new ROM (which caused by reason no 4).

Here are the steps that you need to follow:

  1. MAKE SURE YOU ALREADY HAVE HARD-SPL INSTALLED (not sure? DONT proceed)
  2. BACKUP ALL OF YOUR DATA
  3. Turn on your device into bootloader menu (if you dont know how to do it, please refer device manual)
  4. Connect the USB cable from your device to your computer
  5. Enter the bootloader cmd prompt
    • For Windows user : Make sure you have disabled the USB connection in ActiveSync, before trying to connect to the bootloader: File –> Connection settings –> uncheck “allow USB connections” then, download and run the mtty program
    • For Linux user: Download the htc-flasher, run it, and choose Bootloader Cmd Prompt
  6. Type the following command (for advance user: dont set any value for StartAddr and Len in erase, just use default value)
    password BsaD5SeoA
    erase
    task 28
  7. Reset/restart your device by poking into the reset hole or you can issue the following command
    ResetDevice
  8. Now you can flash your GSM/Radio ROM
  9. And finally you can flash your cooked ROM as usual/normal
  10. If you device is still stuck in tri-colour / boot loader mode, perform the following command
    set 16 0
    ResetDevice

Cheers…! 😀


More and More Exploits are Now Targeting Clientside & Mobile

Posted: July 12th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: IT Related | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »


[img source]

(The facts that I’m gonna talk about are based on my observations)

Back in mid 2007, Mass SQL injection that contain malicious JavaScript started to bring havoc the our cyberspace. But it brought not enough impact to alert and educate the internet user.. Until mid 2008 where another flood of Mass SQL injection happened attacking MS SQL and not so long after that people cant stop talking about 0day in IE, follow by Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Mozilla Firefox and etc..

This clearly shows that the attacking vector is now somehow changed into the client side. This is due to the number of victim on the client side is way more compare to on the server side. Normally the mission of this kind of attack is to force the vulnerable application to crash and execute arbitrary code usually used to download another malicious file and execute it (drive by download). The victim (client) is now part of the attacker’s botnet. Awuuuooo0… (That is how the botnet sound alike.. Hahahaha)

Now in 2009, more and more client side attacks appear abusing IE, Firefox, Thunderbird, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Adobe Flash Player, Microsoft Office Power Point, Microsoft Office Excel, Google Chrome, Apple QuickTime, Foxit PDF Reader, Sun Java Runtime Environment, Adobe Shockwave Player, ActiveX and etc.. The attackers are also aware of the current world issues and trends. That is why we can see some events like H1n1, death of Michael Jackson, independent day, April Fool and many more events have been abuse by the attacker to phish for their victim.

Lately, within thin 2 months, a few mobile phone vulnerabilities have been found. iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile were hooked in these exploits. The attackers not only manage to get sensitive data/info from the mobile device, they also able to take control of the mobile device, and from the recent cases, victim’s mobile phones have been used to send spam SMS, MMS and also Email and at the same time, the SMS, MMS and email sent, work as an agent to ‘invite’ more device to be part of the ‘mobile botnet’ society. Awuuuooo0…

Till next time..

P/S: I am writing this entry while I’m working on my presentation slide for next week presentation in one of the organization of standardization and quality. So, I think these issues need to be highlighted as well in my slides. Beside of trends, the impact also need to be highlighted and ‘how bad is the impact could be’ should also be in part of the slide. The after discussing about the trend and impact, please make this as a habit which is to discuss on the prevention and the mitigation part as well. This is important because leaving the presentation stage without prevention or mitigation steps will create FUD to the audience and this is totally not a good practice!


Windows Mobile 6.1 5.2.20764 (Build 20764.1.4.3)

Posted: May 14th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: IT Related | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments »

Today I’ve updated my HTC to Windows Mobile 6.1 5.2.20764 (Build 20764.1.4.3) and reflash my radio ROM using HTC-Flasher, an open source ROM Update Utility by Pau Oliva Fora or well known as ‘pof’.

I’m so satisfied with:

  1. Fix in memory leaking [thanks to Microsoft]
  2. Fix in battery.dll [thanks to FInixNOver]
  3. Fix in battery drying [thanks to HTC Taiwan]

My machine now is faster and last longer 😉

Q&A

Q: Why not Windows Mobile 6.5 (beta) stright away?
A: Memory leaking issues

Q: Why use unofficial/cooked/modified ROM?
A: You can custom it to what you want

Q: Why radio ROM can improve signal & battery performence?
A: Radio ROM is something like firmware/drivers for WiFi, bluetooth, GPS & GSM signal to your PocketPC

Q: I have HTC device. Where should I start to learn these?
A: Google & xda-developers

Q: What is the first thing should I do before I flash my ROM?
A: Make sure you have Hard-SPL installed/flashed.

Q: I don’t want to Google, I don’t want to read, I don’t want to learn new stuff. My battery is always dry & my device performence is sux. I want to flash to latest version of OS (Windows Mobile) and radio ROM. How?
A: Lamers just stay with WM6_WWE