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Background

Workplaces may enforce TOTP 2FA to be enabled Office 365 accounts, which require the Microsoft Authenticator app to be installed.

Regular TOTP applications (such as Aegis, Authy, or LastPass) cannot be used as Microsoft uses a proprietary scheme called phonefactor. Furthermore, the application requires Google Services Framework (GSF) to be installed (likely to provide device notifications), and will refuse to work when it is not present on the device.

Forunately, after the registration is complete, the underlying mechanism the app uses to generate TOTP codes is regular otpauth, and its secrets can be exported with a little bit of effort.

Extracting the keys

Summary

Random set of notes and links that have helped me in the saga to get Ubuntu 22.04 up and running on my 2017 MacBook Pro These notes are mainly for myself in the event that I have to do this again some day. But if you find them helpful, that's great.

Important update

Unfortunately the MacBookPro that I bought second hand turned out to be a dud with some serious hardware flaws that didn't show up until a couple of months after I'd bought it.

I've since purhcased another laptop so I'm not going to be able to maintain this GIST.

I'll leave it here for now in case others want to contribute updates, or clone it. If you feel it's out of date or misleading or a waste of time, let me know in the comments and I'll remove it.

Download the full installer:

softwareupdate --list-full-installers
Finding available software
Software Update found the following full installers:
* Title: macOS Ventura, Version: 13.1, Size: 11931164KiB, Build: 22C65
* Title: macOS Ventura, Version: 13.0.1, Size: 11866460KiB, Build: 22A400
* Title: macOS Ventura, Version: 13.0, Size: 11866804KiB, Build: 22A380
* Title: macOS Monterey, Version: 12.6.2, Size: 12104568KiB, Build: 21G320
* Title: macOS Monterey, Version: 12.6.1, Size: 12108491KiB, Build: 21G217

Blog 2020/5/7

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QEMU PowerPC G4 OS X Tiger (10.4) setup

EDIT 2024/12/1: I updated a few of these commands to work with qemu 9.x.

Remaster Linux ISO:

Useful links:

Removing a Mac's Firmware Password By Reflashing EFI ROM

According to Apple, the only way to remove an unknown firmware password from a MacBook (2011 and later) is to take it to the Apple Store with the original proof-of-purchase. However, I've found that there is another way, which I've been successful with for the unibody MacBook Pro--it's essentially just modifying a couple bytes in the EFI ROM, which should be simple. What's not simple, however, is figuring out how to read and write to the EFI chip. In this post, I'll talk about the process that I figured out and what worked for me.

The Official Method

Apple's method of resetting the firmware password is not reproducible, as Apple generates an SCBO file that unlocks the EFI using their private key. You can read more about this process here. The problem with this system is that, if you are in the unfortunate situation of neither having the firmware unlock pass

	/*
	* Copyright (c) 2025 Volodymyr Galandzij
	*
	* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
	* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
	* You may obtain a copy of the License at
	*
	* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
	*
	* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software

	/*
	* Copyright (c) 2025 Volodymyr Galandzij
	*
	* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
	* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
	* You may obtain a copy of the License at
	*
	* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
	*
	* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software

	boardrev=0x1101

	sromrev=11
	boardtype=0x073e
	vendid=0x14e4
	devid=0x43ba

	macaddr=00:90:4c:0d:f4:3e

	ccode=0

	#!/system/bin/sh

	# assuming youu have magisk, put this in /data/adb/service.d/
	sleep 22;

	# Disable sysctl.conf to prevent ROM interference #1
	if [ -e /system/etc/sysctl.conf ]; then
	mount -o remount,rw /system;
	mv /system/etc/sysctl.conf /system/etc/sysctl.conf.bak;
	mount -o remount,ro /system;