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Benjamin-Dobell
Heimdall
C++2016–2025
Benjamin-Dobell / Heimdall

Heimdall

Heimdall is a cross-platform open-source tool suite used to flash firmware (aka ROMs) onto Samsung Galaxy devices.

Hardware & EmbeddedMobile & Desktop
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
3Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Heimdall is a cross-platform open-source tool suite used to flash firmware (aka ROMs) onto Samsung Galaxy devices.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year6 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-07-12 05:38:30 UTC to 2025-03-04 10:20:01 UTC.

0122016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

6 sources
Benjamin_Dobell·Mar 4, 2025
Location: Melbourne, Australia Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: TypeScript, Next.js, React, React Native, Kotlin, C#, C++, Lua, k8s, PSQL, AWS, Cloudflare. Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VJk9gs1-LN3e333ZDICwkG5pgTbYoa9P/view Email: hn@b.dobell.email Salary Expectation: $250k USD+ I imagine a typical interview with me goes something like this... > Have you been CTO of an acquired company? Yes. https://www.archistar.ai/blog/archistar-raises-11m-to-expand... > Been Head of Engineering of company building safe social experiences for kids? That's a lot more niche. But sure. https://joinender.com > Ever reverse engineered a firmware flashing protocol for phones before? Yeah. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall > Has your state Government ever ripped off your app and tried to buy your silence? Y
Read the rest
ep. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/vline-offer-10k-t... > Have you ever narrowly avoided a DMCA? Just last month! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq4-mkBlu_4 > Ever flown 20 hours just to be stood up by some random company in the reverse logistics space? I was 19. I was young and naive. I'm sorry! > Ever written your own IDE? You bet. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis > Ever reverse engineered Steam's P2P protocol? Well, yeah. But only because I wanted to add dedicated server support for a game that typically only supported P2P. https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/steam-p2p-wireshark > Been hired by a company after you reverse engineered their product? Why, yes. I still consult for them! https://github.com/tts-community/moonsharp-tts-debug > Do you, like, have a normal life? Sure. I've a wife and 3 kids. The eldest is a type 1 diabetics, we live in a semi-rural location and spend 50 minutes driving to school, we have a dog that resembles a luck dragon and I think my wife is writing a smut novel. OK. Fine. No.
In Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2025)
Benjamin_Dobell·May 6, 2019
It's stuff like this that makes me want to build after-market privacy-oriented Samsung firmware, that at a low level (secondary bootloader) supports dual booting. By default you'd boot into the "non-private" environment. That way if customs asks to see your device, you simply boot it up and hand it over. Could make life a lot easier for lawyers, doctors, C-level executives etc. I should note, dual-booting Android phones isn't a new concept, it's just generally performed at a higher (less secure) level. In particular, the secondary bootloader implements Loke (flashing protocol)[1], so a custom secondary bootloader could also prohibit flashing of unsigned images. [1] source, I'm the developer of Heimdall - https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall - https://gitlab.com/BenjaminDobell/Heimdall
In Canada Border Services seizes lawyer's phone, laptop for not sharing passwords

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