Jun 07, 2025
I have to upgrade the Intel-N 62305 Wi-Fi card on my ThinkPad X230 because my university's network now requires a WPA3 connection. However, the default BIOS only whitelists Wi-Fi cards with no WPA3 support.
So, I flashed a different BIOS! Usually, this is done physically with a hardware programmer. I'd like to do that someday when this laptop isn't my main computer. For now, I did a software-based flash using 1vyrain.
The 1vyrain project automates the exploit described here. All I had to do was burn the 1vyrain image onto a flashdrive, and follow the documentation.
I chose to flash a pre-built coreboot BIOS image from the Skulls project. I served the file via a local HTTP web server on a second machine. When booted into 1vyrain and was prompted, I entered the URL to the file, and it flashed the BIOS with no problems.