Tag Archives: ps3

[Pre] Palm Pre Jailbreaks PS3

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A coder going under the nick “black_zero” ported the PS3 jailbreak to the Palm Pre. Find his instructions for “PS3 Freedom for Palm Pre” on the PSX-Scene.com.

[Update] In contrast to “PS3 Groove” this version also seems to enable the possibility of backups – means circumventing of copy protections. It is legally not allowed to apply this in most european countries and the U.S.

Our Comment

Sony’s protection has been compromised, no matter what they’re gonna do in the future. It is likely that there will be an update soon to stop the stack overflows in the USB code. But it won’t help them anymore.

The reason is simple: Sony will not be able to make that insecure system secure again. Because of the jailbreak the PS3 now allows accessing all features. That means that any update to come will be decrypted first, analyzed, modified to re-enable debug backdoors and then installed with all the debug features enabled again. Custom modified firmwares are the next logical step.

So although this seems to be good news for the homebrew scene, since there is hope now for a universal media center based on the PS3, the downside is still that some versions of the jailbreak also enable to play illegal backups.And since Sony’s biz model is selling licenses and games they will fight the jailbreak by trying to detect it and to block jailbroken devices from accessing the Playstation Network. And this means: permanent updates. For people playing a lot this will not be an option as they will have to wait again and again for custom firmwares that are likely to not work very long.

In the meantime check the Palm Pre vid:

[PS3] PSGroove: Open Source PS3 Jailbreak Released

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As expected an open source version of the PS3 Jailbreak has been released by french hackers Mathieulh and RichDevX. Find the source code here. Support for PS3Jailbreak’s backup manager which would technically allow piracy, has thus been disabled as this implementation targets at homebrew only.

The exploit is intended to be burnt to AT90USB and related microcontrollers like:

  • AT90USB162
  • AT90USB646
  • AT90USB647
  • AT90USB1286
  • AT90USB1287
  • ATMEGA32U4

PS3-Hacks.com now provide compiled binary files ready to be flashed to ATMEGA USB sticks. Tutorials and manuals for all John Does among us are likely to surface within the next few days.

Congratulations to Mathieulh and RichDevX.

[PS3] Sony Australia Vs. PS Jailbreak Suppliers

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Sony Australia somehow managed to get court orders for a temporary injunction against australian based modchip sellers like OZModChips, ModSupplier and Quantronics. Until today (Aug 31st, 2010) none of the modchip sellers is allowed to sell any PS Jailbreak device they rather have to give up the whole stock that they get until today.

Well this doesn’t come unexpected as modchip sellers in Europe have had the same legal battles a couple of years ago.

We don’t believe Sony will win in the end. Their strategy can only be delaying the inevitable. As a matter of fact, the PS3 has eventually been broken, the PS Jailbreak device samples have already been fully reverse engineered by a couple of chinese manufacturers and also by other teams.

A free open source solution is most likely to be released sooner or later.

[PS3] Hacking the Hackers: PS Jailbreak Reverse Engineered

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German Gamefreax claim to have reverse engineered a testing PSJailbreak device. They say this exploit is based on emulating of a USB hub which gets virtual devices attached and unattached at certain points during the boot process.

Among those emulated devices there is also one that uses the ID of Sony’s JIG module. Anyway Gamefreax claim this hack is based on a self developed exploit. Dumped files that might support this claim are not available at this moment…

Picture snippet of USB Stream is courtesy of Gamefreax.de…

courtesy_of_gamefreax_de-usbstream

[PS3] GeoHot Reenables “Other OS” (Linux) Support

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What happened so far?

GeoHot has had a reverse-engineerer’s look into Sony’s high tech gadget and Sony immediately declared war.

Obviously in panic, Sony announced to deactivate Linux (Other-OS) support with their latest firmware 3.21. This was the time when people were wondering how long it would take until GeoHot would reenable it.

The magic PUP files

So it did not take too long. That notorious hacking genious did it. He says he’s using a custom PUP file. A PUP file basically is an update file for the PS3. The interesting point is usually PUP files are signed by Sony.

Speculations

Could that mean there is a major flaw in Sony’s implementation of checking the authenticity of update files (at least until firmware 3.15, which GeoHot mentions is the latest that allows to install his custom PUP).

Anyway, the next weeks will be very interesting.

[PS3] XorLoser Releases PS3 Exploit Toolkit

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Notorious XorLoser has fully rewritten GeoHot’s PS3 glitch attack programs, that allow more convenient exploiting. He names it XorHack.

It allows you to call lv1 syscalls (level 1 system calls) from a normal (userspace) program. It also lets you run the software required when triggering the PS3 exploit from a normal userspace program. To give an example of how it can be used I have included the following example programs:

  • ps3exploit – Runs the software required to exploit the ps3, it loops a number of times which can be specified as a parameter. (This still must be used along with the “button pressing”, it will not exploit the PS3 via software alone).
  • dumphv – Dumps the hypervisor to a file in the current directory.
  • dumpbl – Dumps the bootloader to a file in the current directory.
  • dumprom – Dumps the system  rom to a file in the current directory.

Links

» XorLoser: XorHack – The PS3 Exploit Toolkit…
» GeoHot: Here’s Your Silver Platter…

Picture is courtesy of XorHack…

ps3exploit

[PS3] GeoHot Opens All HV’s SPUs / XorLoser Preps Manual

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Obviously notorious George Hotz has managed to get all 7 SPUs of the Playstation 3’s CPU under his control. This means although he cannot access the CPU’s root key, he now can decrypt everything that’s going thru these SPUs like datastreams of (encrypted) commercial games.

The PPU is higher on the control chain then the SPUs. Even if checks were to be added to, for example, verify the hypervisor before decrypting the kernel, with clever memory mappings you can hide your modified hypervisor.

In the meantime another hacker going under the nick XorLoser has released a more detailed manual of how to use GeoHot’s exploitation files and how to do the glitching.

Besides that XorLoser maintains a plugin for reverser’s beloved Interactive Disassembler (IDA) that contains special PPC instructions for Xbox360 and PS3.

Congratulations to GeoHot. Kudos fly out to XorLoser.

Links

» GeoHot: On Isolated SPUs…
» XorLoser: PS3 Exploit – Software…
» XorLoser: PS3 Exploit – Hardware…
» XorLoser: PS3 and Xbox360 IDA PlugIn…
» Hex-Rays.com: IDA Pro…

[PS3] GeoHot Hacks PS3’s Hypervisor Protection

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Notorious iPhone hacker GeoHot has succesfully circumvented the Playstation’s security system. According to his latest blog entry, he has dumped LV0 and LV1 code, thus allowing him to (theoretically) run code on the processor, bypassing the hypervisor.

The Playstation’s hypervisor is intended to run third party software (like Yellow Dog Linux) on a virtualized level, thus maintaining system integrity and protection of the host system. Within this virtualized environment arbitrary access to certain hardware devices has been disabled, thus allowing only basic access to the graphic processing unit (GPU) for example.

GeoHot seems to have broken the chain of trust. This means he can bypass the hypervisor to directly access hardware like the GPU with his custom code. Anyway he has not released any further information or proof of his work. But hey, it is not anyone, it is GeoHot, so it seems solid.

We compiled some links for people being interested in the hypervisor protection topic.

» GeoHot: Hello hypervisor, I’m GeoHot…
» WeboPedia.com: Virtualization – All About Hypervisors…
» PS3News: Overview on Security architecture of the PS3…
» PS2Dev Wiki: Details about hypervisor functions of the PS3 and Toshiba’s CellEB…
» PS3News: A PS3 Game’s Flow of Execution; PS3’s base AIX…


Massive Attack: Protection (1995)…

[PS3] Infectus Chip downgrades Playstation 3 Firmware

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The first mod chip has been released a couple of days for the Playstation 3 (PS3). It allows installation of any firmware revision you prefer for your best gaming experience, means you can up- and downgrade to whatever firmware you like (see video below). And no: it does not allow playing backups of your games. Even if you could afford a blu ray burner you cannot backup PS3 games currently.

The interesting point is: this chip is platform independent and can also be installed into Nintendo’s Wii or Microsoft’s XBOX 360. Since we don’t know for sure about the legal situation for such a mod chip in our beloved Germanistan, we will not include any links in this article. You know how to find, otherwise you would not be here ;-) Thanks for your understanding.