Recovering the BIOS password from a Panasonic CF-U1 mk2 (AMI Aptio UEFI)

CF-U1-BIOS.md

Recovering the BIOS password from a Panasonic CF-U1 mk2 (AMI Aptio UEFI)

A mess of my own making

While messing with a CF-U1 handheld PC that I bought off ebay I managed to mess up the BIOS and it seems it reverted to previous settings which included an unknown BIOS password, it would however still boot into windows. Since I could still boot windows I was able to dump the bios flash using AFUWINGUI.EXE the version I used was 3.09.03.1462 which is available here:
https://www.ami.com/support-other/ Click on Aptio 4 AMI Firmware Update Utility

There may be a more appropriate version to use as this seemed to have trouble checking the bios version when flashing but did work if you selected "Do Not Check ROM ID" but flashing isnt needed to get the password.

Dumping the flash

Run AFUWINGUI.EXE and at the bottom of the "Information" tab click the save button to make a backup of your bios, the default name is afuwin.rom Now open this saved image with UEFITool_NE available here:
https://github.com/LongSoft/UEFITool/releases

I used UEFITool_NE_A51_win32.zip later versions should work fine. The new engine (NE) verson seems to deal with AMI's odd nvram format better.

Expand the first EfiFirmwareFilesystemGuid >> NVRAM dropdown tree and look for the GUID
C811FA38-42C8-4579-A9BB-60E94EDDFB34 (AMITSESetup)
with subtype Data there will be others with subtype Link which are older no longer valid entrys because of the odd way AMI nvram works, if you find one of these right click on it and select "Go to data" and it will take you to the actual data entry.
Now right click and select "Body hex view" and you should see something like:

0000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0040  7B 13 94 A6 07 3A 29 CD D2 60 1A F4 5C 87 ED 1A  {.”¦.:)ÍÒ`.ô\‡í.
0050  07 AE AE 41 DC D4 0A 68 AB FB FA 0E 55 A2 B0 35  .®®AÜÔ.h«ûú.U¢°5
0060  0B C9 66 5C C1 EF 1C 83 77 16 D2 A9 2D 3D 88 D0  .Éf\Áï.ƒw.Ò©-=ˆÐ
0070  E3 63 3E F7 99 8A F4 1D 4F B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B  ãc>÷™Šô.O±ªD.Ø`k
0080  01

In this the bytes from 0x00 to 0x3F are the currently unset user password, 0x40 to 0x7F are the obfuscated administrator password and 0x80 is the quiet boot flag.

1337 encryption

The password is obfuscated using super secure xor

VOID PasswordEncode( CHAR16 *Password, UINTN MaxSize)
{
    UINTN	ii;
    unsigned int key = 0x935b;

#if SETUP_PASSWORD_NON_CASE_SENSITIVE
    for ( ii = 0; ii < MaxSize; ii++ )
        Password[ii] = ((Password[ii]>=L'a')&&(Password[ii]<=L'z'))?(Password[ii]+L'A'-L'a'):Password[ii];
#endif

    // Encode the password..
    for ( ii = 1; ii <= MaxSize/2; ii++ )
        Password[ii-1] = (CHAR16)(Password[ii-1] ^ (key*ii));
}

So Xoring the above encoded password:

7B 13 94 A6 07 3A 29 CD D2 60 1A F4 5C 87 ED 1A 07 AE AE 41 DC D4 0A 68 AB FB FA 0E 55 A2 B0 35 
0B C9 66 5C C1 EF 1C 83 77 16 D2 A9 2D 3D 88 D0 E3 63 3E F7 99 8A F4 1D 4F B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B

with

5B 93 B6 26 11 BA 6C 4D C7 E0 22 74 7D 07 D8 9A 33 2E 8E C1 E9 54 44 E8 9F 7B FA 0E 55 A2 B0 35 
0B C9 66 5C C1 EF 1C 83 77 16 D2 A9 2D 3D 88 D0 E3 63 3E F7 99 8A F4 1D 4F B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B

gives

20 80 22 80 16 80 45 80 15 80 38 80 21 80 35 80 34 80 20 80 35 80 4e 80 34 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Each character of the password is stored as 2 bytes, and as x86 is wrong endian im guessing should be read as 0x8020 0x8022 I have no idea where the 0x80 comes from possibly its something to do with the EFI_SHIFT_STATE_VALID in this case the password was lower case, possibly uppercase status is encoded in this byte too I have no idea I havent tested uppercase passwords.

WTF scancodes how does this map to keys

From the unobfuscated data you can see the password is 13 characters long, im going to ignore the 0x80 bytes as i dont understand them :P and just look at the others:
20 22 16 45 15 38 21 35 34 20 35 4e 34
They appear to be some sort of scancodes, although while googleing this I found some AMI bioses seem to use ascii here so you can read it out directly as text, but not on this machine.
When this CF-U1 arrived from ebay it had a password which i sucessfully guessed as "toughbook" my second guess would have been "panasonic" since using text written on the front of the PC as a password saves writing it under the battery cover :P
Looking through the older link entrys for the AMITSESetup nvram I found what I thought was the data for this password which deobfuscating as above gave (ignoring the 0x80):

35 39 37 24 25 14 39 39 27
t  o  u  g  h  b  o  o  k

This seemed promising repeated characters have the same value and gives a bit of a key to the mapping Some googeling later about UEFI scancodes and i found this page:
http://wiki.phoenix.com/wiki/index.php/EFI_KEY
From this it seems the value is the offset into this enum so in the toughbook example 35 translates to EfiKeyD5 a second page I found gave the mapping from EfiKey to ascii:
https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/blob/master/MdeModulePkg/Bus/Usb/UsbKbDxe/KeyBoard.c#L36

So i made up a list of byte to ascii using these, below are just 0x10 to 0x4E to cover most values but not be too stupidly long.

Hex	Char	EFIkey	Hex	Char	EFIkey
10	z	EfiKeyB1	30	Tab	EfiKeyTab
11	x	EfiKeyB2	31	q	EfiKeyD1
12	c	EfiKeyB3	32	w	EfiKeyD2
13	v	EfiKeyB4	33	e	EfiKeyD3
14	b	EfiKeyB5	34	r	EfiKeyD4
15	n	EfiKeyB6	35	t	EfiKeyD5
16	m	EfiKeyB7	36	y	EfiKeyD6
17	,	EfiKeyB8	37	u	EfiKeyD7
18	.	EfiKeyB9	38	i	EfiKeyD8
19	/	EfiKeyB10	39	o	EfiKeyD9
1A		EfiKeyRShift	3A	p	EfiKeyD10
1B		EfiKeyUpArrow	3B	[	EfiKeyD11
1C	1	EfiKeyOne	3C	]	EfiKeyD12
1D	2	EfiKeyTwo	3D	\	EfiKeyD13
1E	3	EfiKeyThree	3E		EfiKeyDel
1F		EfiKeyCapsLock	3F		EfiKeyEnd
20	a	EfiKeyC1	40		EfiKeyPgDn
21	s	EfiKeyC2	41	7	EfiKeySeven
22	d	EfiKeyC3	42	8	EfiKeyEight
23	f	EfiKeyC4	43	9	EfiKeyNine
24	g	EfiKeyC5	44	`	EfiKeyE0
25	h	EfiKeyC6	45	1	EfiKeyE1
26	j	EfiKeyC7	46	2	EfiKeyE2
27	k	EfiKeyC8	47	3	EfiKeyE3
28	l	EfiKeyC9	48	4	EfiKeyE4
29	;	EfiKeyC10	49	5	EfiKeyE5
2A	'	EfiKeyC11	4A	6	EfiKeyE6
2B	|	EfiKeyC12	4B	7	EfiKeyE7
2C	4	EfiKeyFour	4C	8	EfiKeyE8
2D	5	EfiKeyFive	4D	9	EfiKeyE9
2E	6	EfiKeySix	4E	0	EfiKeyE10
2F	+	EfiKeyPlus

So what was the password?

Using the above list and the recovered scancodes gave:

20 22 16 45 15 38 21 35 34 20 35 4e 34
a  d  m  1  n  i  s  t  r  a  t  0  r

and when i tried adm1nistrat0r it worked!
This is not complete as there are still questions about the 0x80 bytes but my guess is they encode the shift alt etc modifier keys but im back into my handheld so i'm not sure ill look further into it. This may also apply to other Aptio bioses as well as the Panasonic CF-U1, and if the machine isnt bootable you may be able to use a cheap spi adapter to dump the bios, in the case of the CF-U1 it uses an LPC flash which I don't think you can get cheap clips and readers for and its buried in the machine so a nuisance to get to.

I hope for a bad or wrong dump and next time I will unsolder the IC and re-read it.

Hi max,

i would guess that a bad dump is unlikely, since you were able to find AMITSESetup.

Maybe the following issues apply:

• UEFI tool sometimes does not show the content of the variables, if you are using the current version. Use the older "a51" release and see if the content changes.
• If this does not help you can try search for the last few hex characters of the key "B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B" by opening the bios with a raw hex editor. For short passwords or the 20 bytes hash these should stay the same. But there are potentially multiple matches.
• Panasonic might have changed the way that the password is stored.

Best,
Benjamin

Hello, I have a FZ-G1 MK4 in front of me which has a bios password. I followed the instructions and the video on Youtube, but made a dump via CH341a and neoprogrammer. However, I can't find a password in AMITSESetup.

HEX: 0000 4E5641521901FFFFFF8327414D495453 0010 455365747570000000000000000000000 0020 00000000000000000000000000000000 0030 00000000000000000000000000000000 0040 00000000000000000000000000000000 0050 00000000000000000000000000000000 0060 00000000000000000000000000000000 0070 00000000000000000000000000000000 0080 00000000000000000000000000000000 0090 00000000000000010000000000000000 00A0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00B0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00C0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00D0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00E0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00F0 00000000000000000000000000000000 0100 00000000000000000000000000000000 0110 000000000000000000

HEX Body: 0010 00000000000000000000000000000000 0020 00000000000000000000000000000000 0030 00000000000000000000000000000000 0040 00000000000000000000000000000000 0050 00000000000000000000000000000000 0060 00000000000000000000000000000000 0070 00000000000000000000000000000000 0080 01000000000000000000000000000000 0090 00000000000000000000000000000000 00A0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00B0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00C0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00D0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00E0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00F0 00000000000000000000000000000000 0100 0000

I hope for a bad or wrong dump and next time I will unsolder the IC and re-read it.

I have never had any success trying to do these on the board and for what it is worth they are by far one of the easiest chips to remove and re-install once you have reprogrammed them

@corty8
It will not be possible to find the corresponding password for your model. Just clear the NVRAM.

@corty8 It will not be possible to find the corresponding password for your model. Just clear the NVRAM.

oh yes that is what I have do, I have done dozens of the FZ-G1 units, but someone above mentions that they have tried to do it while the BIOS chips is still soldered to the board and said I have not had any success in trying to do it that way, I always remove the chip to clear it

Hello, I have a FZ-G1 MK4 in front of me which has a bios password. I followed the instructions and the video on Youtube, but made a dump via CH341a and neoprogrammer. However, I can't find a password in AMITSESetup.
HEX: 0000 4E5641521901FFFFFF8327414D495453 0010 455365747570000000000000000000000 0020 00000000000000000000000000000000 0030 00000000000000000000000000000000 0040 00000000000000000000000000000000 0050 00000000000000000000000000000000 0060 00000000000000000000000000000000 0070 00000000000000000000000000000000 0080 00000000000000000000000000000000 0090 00000000000000010000000000000000 00A0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00B0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00C0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00D0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00E0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00F0 00000000000000000000000000000000 0100 00000000000000000000000000000000 0110 000000000000000000
HEX Body: 0010 00000000000000000000000000000000 0020 00000000000000000000000000000000 0030 00000000000000000000000000000000 0040 00000000000000000000000000000000 0050 00000000000000000000000000000000 0060 00000000000000000000000000000000 0070 00000000000000000000000000000000 0080 01000000000000000000000000000000 0090 00000000000000000000000000000000 00A0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00B0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00C0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00D0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00E0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00F0 00000000000000000000000000000000 0100 0000
I hope for a bad or wrong dump and next time I will unsolder the IC and re-read it.

I have never had any success trying to do these on the board and for what it is worth they are by far one of the easiest chips to remove and re-install once you have reprogrammed them

Okay, no problem, I'll desolder the chip and read it in again.

@corty8 It will not be possible to find the corresponding password for your model. Just clear the NVRAM.

Okay and now clearing the NVRAM means what exactly? What do I have to watch out for?

I hope for a bad or wrong dump and next time I will unsolder the IC and re-read it.

Hi max,

i would guess that a bad dump is unlikely, since you were able to find AMITSESetup.

Maybe the following issues apply:

• UEFI tool sometimes does not show the content of the variables, if you are using the current version. Use the older "a51" release and see if the content changes.
• If this does not help you can try search for the last few hex characters of the key "B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B" by opening the bios with a raw hex editor. For short passwords or the 20 bytes hash these should stay the same. But there are potentially multiple matches.
• Panasonic might have changed the way that the password is stored.

Best, Benjamin

I will search in Hex Editor for these Hex characters, maybe i will have success.

Thank you guys for your help.

best wishes

maxtheobald are you doing a search for the GUID or are you actually scrolling through and trying to find it?

Hello, I have a FZ-G1 MK4 in front of me which has a bios password. I followed the instructions and the video on Youtube, but made a dump via CH341a and neoprogrammer. However, I can't find a password in AMITSESetup.
HEX: 0000 4E5641521901FFFFFF8327414D495453 0010 455365747570000000000000000000000 0020 00000000000000000000000000000000 0030 00000000000000000000000000000000 0040 00000000000000000000000000000000 0050 00000000000000000000000000000000 0060 00000000000000000000000000000000 0070 00000000000000000000000000000000 0080 00000000000000000000000000000000 0090 00000000000000010000000000000000 00A0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00B0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00C0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00D0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00E0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00F0 00000000000000000000000000000000 0100 00000000000000000000000000000000 0110 000000000000000000
HEX Body: 0010 00000000000000000000000000000000 0020 00000000000000000000000000000000 0030 00000000000000000000000000000000 0040 00000000000000000000000000000000 0050 00000000000000000000000000000000 0060 00000000000000000000000000000000 0070 00000000000000000000000000000000 0080 01000000000000000000000000000000 0090 00000000000000000000000000000000 00A0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00B0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00C0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00D0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00E0 00000000000000000000000000000000 00F0 00000000000000000000000000000000 0100 0000
I hope for a bad or wrong dump and next time I will unsolder the IC and re-read it.

I have never had any success trying to do these on the board and for what it is worth they are by far one of the easiest chips to remove and re-install once you have reprogrammed them

Okay, no problem, I'll desolder the chip and read it in again.

@corty8 It will not be possible to find the corresponding password for your model. Just clear the NVRAM.

Okay and now clearing the NVRAM means what exactly? What do I have to watch out for?

I hope for a bad or wrong dump and next time I will unsolder the IC and re-read it.

Hi max,
i would guess that a bad dump is unlikely, since you were able to find AMITSESetup.
Maybe the following issues apply:

• UEFI tool sometimes does not show the content of the variables, if you are using the current version. Use the older "a51" release and see if the content changes.
• If this does not help you can try search for the last few hex characters of the key "B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B" by opening the bios with a raw hex editor. For short passwords or the 20 bytes hash these should stay the same. But there are potentially multiple matches.
• Panasonic might have changed the way that the password is stored.

Best, Benjamin

I will search in Hex Editor for these Hex characters, maybe i will have success.

Thank you guys for your help.

best wishes

For what it's worth, I've done at least 50 FZ-G1's of various generations (amongst many other Panasonic models) and have read the chip on the board every time. It's a game of trial and error. Remove the battery, attach the charger - try to read. If that fails, leave the battery connected, with the charger connected. Or try turning the device on, with battery and charger connected and then switch off, leave all connected and then try to read. Sometimes you have to enter the bios and then power off. It's usually a combination of these things AND, sometimes the same device will perform differently to another of the same model. I also have a fair amount of luck using a bench power supply for powering the eeprom, this way I'm not relying on the fluctuating power supply of a cheap programmer. TL866ii is also a good programmer, but I have a CH341a which I modified to not supply 5v to the chip (as these have a design flaw - google CH341a 3.3v mod).

If you get one successful dump, dump again and then compare the two files with HxD for any differences. If they are identical, you are good to go.

Good luck!

Hi - Trying to understand fully what you've shared here.

The HEX I retrieve from the rom is:
5B 46 B6 48 11 E2 6C 70 C7 9D 22 B1 7D 43 D8 2E 33 B8 8E D7 E9 5C 44 DA 9F 8A FA FE 55 D8 B0 7F 0B E0 66 C8 C1 FF 1C A6 77 16 D2 A9 2D 3D 88 D0 E3 63 3E F7 99 8A F4 1D 4F B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B

In your example you said you "xor" that with the other 64 bytes (the second 32 being the same as the first set) - but where did that part come from? Is that applied across all cf-53 models or did you need to retrieve that out of the rom?

Also how can I "xor" the HEX values? Is is an operation I can write in Python?

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance - I love reverse engineering and learning

Hi satorisage,

but where did that part come from?

See the secton "1337 encryption" of en4rab's original post. The key can generated in 16 bytes increments because it is
0x935b * (currentIteration + 1),
when you only use the lower 16 bytes of the result. This seems to be the same across many different toughbook models.

Is is an operation I can write in Python?

Yes, see following code using your rom data.

show code for panasoHardcoded.py python3

import binascii

def hexPrettyPrint(bytesStr):
    print(binascii.hexlify(bytesStr, sep=" "))

def generatePanaXorSequence(numOfBytes):
    if(numOfBytes%2):
        raise ValueError("Only even number of bytes supported")
    key = int("0x935b", 16)
    numOfInt16 = numOfBytes//2
    generatedKey = bytes()
    for i in range(numOfInt16):
        keyForThisInt16 = key*(i+1) 
        keyForThisInt16 = keyForThisInt16 & int("0xffff", 16)   #only keep the lower 2 bytes
        keyForThisInt16 = keyForThisInt16.to_bytes(2, 'little') 
        generatedKey = generatedKey + keyForThisInt16
    return generatedKey
    
def xorByteStrings(bytesStr1, bytesStr2):
    if(len(bytesStr1) != len(bytesStr2)):
        raise ValueError("Xor needs same length of byteStrings")
    byteStringResult = bytes()
    for i in range(len(bytesStr1)):
        byteStringResult += bytes([bytesStr1[i] ^ bytesStr2[i]])
    return byteStringResult
    
def getSHA1ifExist(bytesStr):
    sha1 = bytes()
    for i in range(20):                 #sha1 is 20 bytes
        if(bytesStr[2*i] != 0):         #check if the upper bytes is always zero of each int16
            return None
        sha1 += bytes([bytesStr[2*i + 1]])
    for i in range(40, len(bytesStr)):
        if(bytesStr[i] != 0):           #all bytes after the first 40 bytes should be zero
            return None
    return sha1

def getASCIIifExist(bytesStr):
    asciiBytes = bytes()
    for i in range(len(bytesStr)//2):
        if(bytesStr[2*i+1] != 0):        #check if the lower bytes is always zero of each int16
            return None
        if(bytesStr[2*i]):
            asciiBytes += bytes([bytesStr[2*i]])
    return asciiBytes.decode("ascii")

#calculation
yourValueFromNvRam = "5B 46 B6 48 11 E2 6C 70 C7 9D 22 B1 7D 43 D8 2E 33 B8 8E D7 E9 5C 44 DA 9F 8A FA FE 55 D8 B0 7F 0B E0 66 C8 C1 FF 1C A6 77 16 D2 A9 2D 3D 88 D0 E3 63 3E F7 99 8A F4 1D 4F B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B"
yourValueFromNvRam = yourValueFromNvRam.replace(" ", "")                        #remove whitespaces
yourValueFromNvRam = binascii.unhexlify(yourValueFromNvRam)                     #to bytes
generatedKeyWithSameLength = generatePanaXorSequence(len(yourValueFromNvRam))
resultOfXor = xorByteStrings(yourValueFromNvRam, generatedKeyWithSameLength)

#analysis
sha1 = getSHA1ifExist(resultOfXor)
if(sha1 == None):
    asciiString = getASCIIifExist(resultOfXor)
    if(asciiString):
        print(f"here is you password:\n{asciiString}")
    print("here is you xored sequence:")
    hexPrettyPrint(resultOfXor)
else:
    print("the xored sequence is likeley the following sha1 hash:")
    hexPrettyPrint(sha1)

(edit 04.01.23: add ascii conversion)

Please let me known if you have any additional questions.

One interesting thing I hadn't had time to implement yet is to open the dumped hex file, and search for occurences fo the last few bytes of the xor sequence for the length 64 bytes.
Since the password or hash is likely to be relatively short <40 bytes the last few bytes are most likely equal to the xor sequence.
Then derive the start of the sequence an overwrite all 64 bytes with zeros to generate a flashable image without password protection.

Maybe a check if the bios dump is complete (includes the intel me section, ...) would be important, because flashing back a partial modified dump will result in a "dead" device. Finding a complete dump online to recover from this state might be difficult.

Best,
Benjamin

Hi satorisage,

but where did that part come from?

See the secton "1337 encryption" of en4rab's original post. The key can generated in 16 bytes increments because it is 0x935b * (currentIteration + 1), when you only use the lower 16 bytes of the result. This seems to be the same across many different toughbook models.

Is is an operation I can write in Python?

Yes, see following code using your rom data.

show code for panasoHardcoded.py python3
Please let me known if you have any additional questions.

One interesting thing I hadn't had time to implement yet is to open the dumped hex file, and search for occurences fo the last few bytes of the xor sequence for the length 64 bytes. Since the password or hash is likely to be relatively short <40 bytes the last few bytes are most likely equal to the xor sequence. Then derive the start of the sequence an overwrite all 64 bytes with zeros to generate a flashable image without password protection.

Maybe a check if the bios dump is complete (includes the intel me section, ...) would be important, because flashing back a partial modified dump will result in a "dead" device. Finding a complete dump online to recover from this state might be difficult.

Best, Benjamin

Thanks for the reply! Seems like for the CF54's I have this key could be incorrect - or maybe there is something else going on. When I extracted and calculated the result I got d56e583d7dc544b496160832f1f07a4a29941025 as the sha1. But the password is "tsipub" and as a sha1 hash it calculates to 48d87741220aa2a705005a01bbbcdb1c858eae41. Any thoughts on what could be going on there?

Seems like for the CF54's I have this key could be incorrect

If the code says that the xored result is likeley a sha1 hash then the xor-key part is working / the generated key from panaXorSequence is correct. It is basically impossible to get the these zero valued bytes every second character for a non matching key (just add hexPrettyPrint(resultOfXor) in the else case and you will see these zeros). If you look closely at your valueFromNvram you can see that many bytes (those that are zero after performing the xor) are equal to the output of the generatePanaXorSequence function.

But the password is "tsipub" and as a sha1 hash it calculates to 48d87741220aa2a705005a01bbbcdb1c858eae41. Any thoughts on what could be going on there?

I would have two possible explanations for this behavior:

• instead of the password in ascii they could have hashed the scancodes. I suspect this because they also stored the scancodes for the non hashed password see first post of en4rab.
• they could have added some constant extra bytes at the end of the password like a constant salt

I have to admit that I didn't really looked into this, and just replaced the section with zeros and called it a day.

I guess that trying one letter passwords, reading the hash, and then trying to brute force the hash could lead to some insight.

Best,
Benjamin

Hello folks,
what can I say? The tip from @userx14 to simply overwrite the affected bit combination with 0 worked! Apparently the supervisor password is only stored once in the chip of the FZ-G1 MK4. Interestingly, the operating hours counter was also set to 0.
By the way, flashing also worked when installed.
Thanks again for your help.

Hello. So I tried this on a Panasonic FZ-G1 MK2 and seems went further than the guy with a FZ-G1 MK4. It doesn't contain an item with guid "C811FA38-42C8-4579-A9BB-60E94EDDFB34" but the one with name "AmiTseSetupGuid" and also text "AMITSESetup".
The content read as :
5b7db609112d6c18c7bc22b37d2fd8b0334e8e26e9a244339fb9fafd55eeb0520b286641c1251c427716d2a92d3d88d0e3633ef7998af41d4fb1aa4405d8606b and after Xoring, it comes with such a result:
ee002f00970055005c00c70028002a006000e700f600db00c200f3004c006700e1001d00ca00c1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Which the 80s that should be showing up are instead coming up with 00s and other bytes doesn't seems to be either valid EFI scancodes or ASCII codes. I wonder if some kind of masking or other procedure has been applied to them ?

Hi @Randname666, your result is most likely the sha1 of the password / keyboard scancodes and maybe some additional constant. (20 bytes = "sha1 length" and every second byte is zero padding).

Hi @Randname666, your result is most likely the sha1 of the password / keyboard scancodes and maybe some additional constant. (20 bytes = "sha1 length" and every second byte is zero padding).

Well, tried hashcating that sha1 and it exhausted 8 bytes of a-z, A-Z, 0~9 combinations. Either that's not the right direction, or just unfortunate enough to come into a guy who's really serious about device security.

Well, tried hashcating that sha1 and it exhausted 8 bytes of a-z, A-Z, 0~9 combinations. Either that's not the right direction, or just unfortunate enough to come into a guy who's really serious about device security.

Most likeley they are not ascii characters but key scancodes and there could be some additional constant added to the end.

It is possible to just overwrite the xored hash with zeros and flash the modified image back. But there is the risk that if you only have a partial bios backup / the bios chip is write protected, that you can brick the device when using a software flash tool. (See some of the earlier posts)

But there is the risk that if you only have a partial bios backup / the bios chip is write protected, that you can brick the device when using a software flash tool.

So, things like AFUWINGUI won't generate a full BIOS backup sometimes? Also, I am not sure if I got the idea of "write protected" here but I attempted a BIOS upgrade with the program provided by Panasonic, as on some "consumer level" laptops upgrading, downgrading, or "upgrading" to the same version of the current BIOS could get the password wiped, but not the case here: The FZ-G1 MK2 accepted and successfully finished the BIOS update, but the password is still kept. Luckily that the schema of the password storage is not changed.

I'm in lack of the tool and the skills to do it the hardware way if something goes wrong so I'd rather let the password stay there at least at the moment.

As an alternative to erase the password, I remove the 8 pin bios chip from the board, put it in an RT809f programmer, download the chip data to a computer, over write the password with all 00 bytes, write the edited data back to the chip and put chip back on board.

…

On Sun, Sep 18, 2022 at 7:51 PM Randname666 ***@***.***> wrote: ***@***.**** commented on this gist. ------------------------------ But there is the risk that if you only have a partial bios backup / the bios chip is write protected, that you can brick the device when using a software flash tool. So, things like AFUWINGUI won't generate a full BIOS backup sometimes? Also, I am not sure if I got the idea of "write protected" here but I attempted a BIOS upgrade with the program provided by Panasonic, as on some "consumer level" laptops upgrading, downgrading, or "upgrading" to the same version of the current BIOS could get the password wiped, but not the case here: The FZ-G1 MK2 accepted and successfully finished the BIOS update, but the password is still kept. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://gist.github.com/550880c099b5194fbbf3039e3c8ab6fd#gistcomment-4307055>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFHQZCIHW3P7SCXUVMLHT3DV662KNANCNFSM4INSYQZQ> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

hi Experts,
I bought a Renew CF-53 from Amazon and it appears to have bios password locked. Contacted the seller, and so far, no answer.
Here is the link to the bios dump: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vZ1mwTIIfs1fcMAmoxbcp3ntUjrT1zuC/view?usp=sharing
What I tried so far:

1. Tried to zero out the password and then flash it. The problem is that bios flash is locked
   Error 280: Failed to disable write protection for the BIOS space!

2. Tried the UEFI tool to get and got the hash pw.
   5B-8F-B6-EE-11-9A-6C-3A-C7-77-22-6D-7D-02-D8-74-33-59-8E-E2-E9-0F-44-C7-9F-59-FA-0C-55-71-B0-6D 0B-81-66-EB-C1-27-1C-C2-77-16-D2-A9-2D-3D-88-D0-E3-63-3E-F7-99-8A-F4-1D-4F-B1-AA-44-05-D8-60-6B
   The problem is when I Xor with the static Hex string from this post
   5B 93 B6 26 11 BA 6C 4D C7 E0 22 74 7D 07 D8 9A 33 2E 8E C1 E9 54 44 E8 9F 7B FA 0E 55 A2 B0 35 0B C9 66 5C C1 EF 1C 83 77 16 D2 A9 2D 3D 88 D0 E3 63 3E F7 99 8A F4 1D 4F B1 AA 44 05 D8 60 6B
   I got these
   0x00, 0x1C, 0x00, 0xC8, 0x00, 0x20, 0x00, 0x77, 0x00, 0x97, 0x00, 0x19, 0x00, 0x05, 0x00, 0xEE, 0x00, 0x77, 0x00, 0x23, 0x00, 0x5B, 0x00, 0x2F, 0x00, 0x22, 0x00, 0x02, 0x00, 0xD3, 0x00, 0x58, 0x00, 0x48, 0x00, 0xB7, 0x00, 0xC8, 0x00, 0x41, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
   Fitlered out the 0x00, I got
   0x1C, 0xC8, 0x20, 0x77, 0x97, 0x19, 0x05, 0xEE, 0x77, 0x23, 0x5B, 0x2F, 0x22, 0x02, 0xD3, 0x58, 0x48, 0xB7, 0xC8, 0x41
   Now I have no idea what to do next.
   Some help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi @hueyvle,

to 1). I guess your best bet is to use a hardware flasher like the ch341a which can be had for around 5$-15$. If you scan through some of the previous posts you might find additional tips (e.g. how to bypass feeding 3.3V to the other ic's on the board) or simply ask if you need assistance.

to 2). Your filtered result is 20bytes long, so most likeley that's a sha1 hash.
If you paste your hex bytes into the python code in this post it would also reports this.
Unfortunatelly I do not know if there is additional salt involved in hashing or what is hashed there (keyscancodes or direct ascii characters), so brute forcing is not an option.

Best,
Benjamin

Thank you @userx14 for your inputs.

I would gladly pay $15 to have this fixed. I'm just not a hardware guy and would be very nervous to use the hw flasher.
So, my plan is

1. disable BIOS write protection (this guide https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/guide-grub-fix-intel-fpt-error-280-or-368-bios-lock-asus-other-mod-bios-flash/32725).
2. blank out the password on the bios dump
3. flash the bios with the dump.

I know it is too much to ask, but what are your thoughts on this plan. Is it doable?

Thanks!

I know it is too much to ask, but what are your thoughts on this plan. Is it doable?

Well, I would first make sure that you have a full backup of this flash chip.
This is important because there have been cases where attempting to flash the modified dump erased the hole flash chip, which meant that parts not backed up were lost (and free downloads of full dumps of these panasonic machines are hard to find online).
I'm suspicious, because your file is 0x580000 bytes long which could mean that this is not a full backup of the whole flash, but only the bios/uefi secion, but I'm not sure.
Can you try to find out if the file size matches to the flash chip size built into you machine by checking the IC marking?

I did the hardware flashing with a ch341a on a cf53 mk2 (just as a reference picture), not sure if it is the same on newer models, but the flash chip was accessible under the service hatch.

Greetings,
Benjamin

my laptop is CF53 MK4

Can you try to find out if the file size matches to the flash chip size built into you machine by checking the IC marking?

Well, I don't know how to check IC marking, but it does sound like I need pop the hatch open. I used "flash programming tool" fptw from Intel ME system tools v9.5.
fptw.exe -BIOS -D <binname>
Please let me know if you have different tool.

I disconnected the backup Battery (two pin connector opposite to the bios chip in the wifi/4G hatch) and in order to detect the chip I had to disconnect the 3.3v supply of the bios ic (pin 8) by scratching the trace coming out from underneath the chip, possibly because the programmer powered other stuff on the 3.3V line (IC is Micron 25Q128AB, see picture). After dumping the 16MB bios file with programmer software 1.30, getting the correct offset with UEFI-Tool-A51, zeroing out the 64bytes with HxD.exe and flashing back to the chip, I reconnected 3.3V with a jumper wire. All of this can be done without dissasembling the laptop through the wifi and 4g module access hatch, although it's quiet tight and I had do saw of a chunk of my bios test clip because it collided with the magnesium housing.

I really prefer not messing with wire and soldering.

Hi, could someone please help me to get my BIOS password please ?
I've found this using HxD :

26 A5 D2 82 6C 1F DB F2 F9 3B 13 80 D3 56 C3 83 F8 5B 08 6A AA 5C 48 98 38 F8 AC 5F F2 2E 1F E9

Here's the bios dump : https://transfert.free.fr/IZwnsI

Thanks !!

Hi, could someone please help me to get my BIOS password please ? I've found this using HxD : 26 A5 D2 82 6C 1F DB F2 F9 3B 13 80 D3 56 C3 83 F8 5B 08 6A AA 5C 48 98 38 F8 AC 5F F2 2E 1F E9

Here's the bios dump : https://transfert.free.fr/IZwnsI

Thanks !!

Hi @MichelBaie ,

this seems to be the correct section in the bios, but getting back the original password is probably difficult. Likely there is no xor done and these 32 bytes are directely obtained from something like a SHA-256 hash.
Overwriting with zeros should still work though, but be careful when attempting this, since there have been some problems with sections of the bios getting lost when flashing with software flashers.
This is difficult to recover from, when you do not have a full backup of bios flash chip.

Best
Benjamin

Password is hashed , i can remove it from dump , file link not valid.

Hi, don't know, what you deleted... There are no more passwords at NVRAM under AMITSESetup. at this place, there is something deleted - but don't know about correct deleted.... sorry Am Mi., 4. Jan. 2023 um 05:54 Uhr schrieb KJTR ***@***.***>:

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***@***.**** commented on this gist. ------------------------------ Hey guys can anyone help me with my password? Im scratching me head constantly over this. Here is a copy of the bios. https://easyupload.io/hp84wa The password goes from 0x28 - 0x4F. I can't figure out how to go further. In the code listed above where was the value of UINTN ii; unsigned int key = 0x935b; derived from before starting the xor python script. Secondly if those are standards what is the derived scan code from my sequence? (Ill tip the first person via paypal friends and family for the password.) [image: image] <https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/10555280/210486910-bd161ec0-f951-4f5b-828d-32dc23a198b6.png> — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://gist.github.com/550880c099b5194fbbf3039e3c8ab6fd#gistcomment-4423425> or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/APMRVWGT7ZPT52SK2WJO6ETWQT7CBBFKMF2HI4TJMJ2XIZLTSKBKK5TBNR2WLJDHNFZXJJDOMFWWLK3UNBZGKYLEL52HS4DFQKSXMYLMOVS2I5DSOVS2I3TBNVS3W5DIOJSWCZC7OBQXE5DJMNUXAYLOORPWCY3UNF3GS5DZVRZXKYTKMVRXIX3UPFYGLK2HNFZXIQ3PNVWWK3TUUZ2G64DJMNZZDAVEOR4XAZNEM5UXG5FFOZQWY5LFVA4TENBQHA3DEMFHORZGSZ3HMVZKMY3SMVQXIZI> . You are receiving this email because you commented on the thread. Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub> .

I don't know why the post in this mornings notification email isn't here
But it looks like KJTR's PW is

C e l l T e c h

I don't know why the post in this mornings notification email isn't here But it looks like KJTR's PW is

C e l l T e c h

how did you find it ?

I XOR'd the string with the key and the response wasn't long enough. So not knowing the particulars of their model and since some of the eariler ones aren't hashed I looked up the response in ascii
for example
$18 XOR $5B is $43 which is "C" in ascii