• See what's going on behind the scenes at Bimmerlabs - completed and published major changes will show up here. Of course, we are always working on other updates that are invisible to the user.

    #68 New flash tools are coming! v0.8.95 2018-07-19

    Currently, Bimmerlabs relies on WinKFP for most of it's flashing - it works well, and the batch files make it easier, but it's still a pain for most users to get working correctly. This wastes precious time on support and troubleshooting that could otherwise be avoided with a simpler interface.

    We have always considered WinKFP an intermediate step towards having our own flash tools - the ultimate goal is actually no downloads at all (the technology exists to control a USB port through the browser), but we're not quite there yet.

    A Windows based program will be released first - it's already quite functional, but we needed to make some changes to protect our users as well as ourselves. A mobile version will be our next goal, probably for Android.

    How it will work

    We are going to require that our software can only flash files signed by us. The binaries will actually be unencrypted, but a signature will be added to the end that our software will look for. If it's invalid or missing, it will simply refuse the flash.

    The software will also be able to read out your original binary, and flash any Bimmerlabs generated binaries. We will even be able to backup boot passwords and ISNs for certain DMEs (which means they can be cloned). It will automatically configure itself based on your DME as well - so you can't flash the 'wrong' file even if it is correctly signed.

    If you wish to flash your binary with another flash tool, that's fine - just delete the signature at the end of the file. If you need to modify the file, it will have to be run through your Bimmerlabs project first (to update the signature to match the file).

    Why are we using signed files?

    The reason is basically to protect from somebody flashing a 'bad' file to their DME - I have personally bricked my test MSV80 with a bad checksum. Since the file isn't encrypted, you will still be free to do what you like with it (but you will need a Bimmerlabs account to generate it).

    WinKFP flashes will continue to be available for free. And of course, most people do not have access to modify binaries on Bimmerlabs yet - but that will change as we roll our new software out.