Technological discussion on PS3 security and crack.*

[senas8]

I don't usually post much, but this I think we all agree changes everything. As we all most should know who George geohotz is....
I quote:

ON THE PS3

I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1.

3 years, 2 months, 11 days...thats a pretty secure system

Took 5 weeks, 3 in Boston, 2 here, very simple hardware cleverly applied, and some not so simple software.

Shout out to George Kharrat from iPhoneMod Brasil for giving me this PS3 a year and a half ago to hack. Sorry it took me so long

As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG.

A lot more to come...

 

[patsu]

Yap, saw that. If true, Sony ninjas must be scrambling now.

 

[senas8]

In other words the beast has been slain.

 

[RobertR1]

Impressive.

 

[patsu]

It may actually accelerate Sony's plan on the online front.
Let's see.

 

[Carl B]

In other words the beast has been slain.

Well, he was slain before only to re-emerge shortly thereafter newly immortal.

The hardware security is pretty tight on this system, so beyond the initial success of the hack, it will stand to be determined whether it is then in Sony's power to plug the hole. I'm rooting for the hypervisor to tell you the truth! Cracking 'invincible' security is par for the course these days, the underdogs have become the hardware vendors! I'd love to see a system make it through the gauntlet if only for it's contemporary cycle.

 

[draconian]

is the ps3 really hacked?

What does reading and writing to the system memory really give?

From what I understand, to make a custom firmware, someone has to extract the hardware key so that the custom firmware could be run on the system. And from what I remember, this part was the really secure part on the CELL and MS's Xenon cpu.

 

[NRP]

Stuff like this pisses me off. Why don't these obviously talented jackasses grow up and do something that is actually useful?

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

Stuff like this pisses me off. Why don't these obviously talented jackasses grow up and do something that is actually useful?

Agree 100%...

 

[senas8]

What's wrong with full access to use ps3 with Linux or other OS?

 

[patsu]

Negative revenue for Sony, and piracy for developers.

 

[draconian]

What's wrong with full access to use ps3 with Linux or other OS?

Nothing. But the vast majority of people who install custom firmwares (for psp and such) do it for piracy. There are people who flash the dvd firmware the 360 and "claim" it's for backup purposes. <eye roll> Sure it is...

Anyways, the ps3 hasn't really been hacked. This is the same guy who did the hardware hack for the iphone and got a car for it. Nissan 350z if I'm not mistaken. The problem is this, the ps3 and the Xenon have their security key inside the chip itself. All the checking and decrypting of the firmware occurs on inside one of the spus on boot up. During this isolation mode, nothing can view this process.

The iphone hack was a simple buffer overflow attack. This guys is a little naive if he thinks he'll have the same success. All he can do is make a dump of the memory. whopee doo....

 

[vazel]

Potentially no revenue to Sony and developers ? But the worse problem is probably piracy.

Actually, it's negative revenue to Sony.

The psone, ps2, and 360 were probably the most pirated consoles and they are also the most successful outside of the Wii.

I can't think of any homebrew I'd want on the ps3 it's already a good HT device and it installs games to HDDs so no need for an HDLoader app. Maybe for people that want to play snes and other old console roms on it but I do that on my HTPC.

 

[patsu]

Yes, but the order is important.

Make $$$ first, and then get pirated to spread the platform. You forgot PSP above (Is it as successful ?)


Anyway, I am hoping the incident will prompt Sony to invest more in online and even official user generated content (at a later stage).

 

[vazel]

Yes, but the order is important.

Make $$$ first, and then get pirated to spread the platform.

Not sure what you mean. There is no special order to it. The PS3 still not having a mod chip out hasn't helped it any. All those other consoles continued to see rising success even after being rampantly pirated. Being cracked has shown it doesn't affect negatively a console's success.

 

[senas8]

I share the view with all of you on piracy. It's too bad they can't isolate these two. Homebrew/piracy.

 

[corduroygt]

Only real hack with 360 is with the DVD firmware, anything else is either impossible or not something your average user will attempt like soldering etc. PS3 is the same except BD firmware is also encrypted and can be updated with a system firmware update. So an easy hack like that is impossible on the PS3.
These are much more complicated systems with a lot more money poured into them, it'll take a lot of manpower to do something. Not to mention you'd be banned from Live/PSN if you did it anyways.

 

[Rangers]

Not sure what you mean. There is no special order to it. The PS3 still not having a mod chip out hasn't helped it any. All those other consoles continued to see rising success even after being rampantly pirated. Being cracked has shown it doesn't affect negatively a console's success.

I think rampant piracy may hurt the 360 software sales in Europe. If you look at the claimed numbers, 360 has sold close to as much hardware as PS3 in Europe. But outside the UK, it's software doesn't seem to do nearly as well on the charts placing. I've suspected piracy, though I have no real proof. Although whenever 360 software sales lag the sold userbase I also suspect RRODing hardware (moreso the older hardware). If x% of sold hardware is currently broken, you must assume that x is much greater on 360 than Ps3 and some people will never get it fixed.

OTOH, I'd suspect if piracy was such a huge factor, you'd also see 360 hardware sales greatly outpacing PS3's in Europe, and you dont really see that either.

So what I'd expect to see if PS3 piracy happened: Higher hardware sales, lower software sales, mostly in EU as piracy seems less in USA.

Also on 360, I'm not a hacker and dont know about it, but from what I gather it's a never ending game keeping your 360 updated and safe from the MS popo, and you pretty much cant go online anymore at all. This seems to me like piracy is pretty well controlled then. PS3 perhaps can hope for a similar fate, if indeed it ends up "hacked".

 

[Carl B]

Stuff like this pisses me off. Why don't these obviously talented jackasses grow up and do something that is actually useful?

Well, I do respect the effort - a tourney of champions, so to speak! Just because I'm rooting for the hardware this time doesn't mean that I can't respect the challengers.

Anyway, whatever the case, these guys normally do 'grow up' to do something useful. Think of all those shows where the genius criminal gets a chance by the FBI to do good.

But in these cases, it's normally consulting work offered by large corporations to address security and propose solutions.

 

[-tkf-]

Lets see if it works..
And if it doesn, the lets see if the software sales goes down?
Because right now it doesn´t seem like a very well protected Console results in beyond normal software sales in anyway. I would go so far as to say that the PS3 proves that piracy isn´t killing software sales on consoles.