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PS4 hack: Fail0verflow demonstrate Linux and Steam running on Firmware 4.05
- StavrosK 10y agoWhat's the CCC33 event?
- virtuallynathan 10y ago33C3 -- The Chaos Computer Club's yearly conference: https://media.ccc.de/b/congress/2016 https://media.ccc.de/b/congress/2016
- StavrosK 10y agoI know that, but why does the article say CCC33? Is it the 33rd annual CCC? Weird that the article didn't use 33c3 as well.
- nathankunicki 10y agoYes, it was the 33rd annual Chaos Communication Congress (To prefix "C3" with the number is the chosen nomenclature, ie. "33C3". I've never seen the "CCC" prefix used in the wild).
- Flammy 10y agoAnyone remember when PlayStation 3 could be used to install whatever OS you wanted without any jailbreaking? sigh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
- rtpg 10y agoThe OS install was sandboxed iirc, you couldn't use the graphics subsystem or something.
- mikewhy 10y agoYeah it was always pretty nerfed. Cool that you could do it but it performed as well as a potato really.
- Dylan16807 10y agoRight, having a sandbox and losing one SPE was not a big deal. Having no access to the GPU at all was.
- readme 10y agoIt's the fault of their own business model which cuts cost on consoles (they have to compete against the other ones) only jack the price up later on games and make money there. On the bright side, the Air Force made a really nice PS3 cluster. http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercompute...
- pizza 10y agoInteresting! I found a paper by the lead / architect: Integration and Development of the 500 TFLOPS Heterogeneous Cluster (Condor) [0] Another release article that includes more information: http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-the-dods-playstation-powered-condor-cluster-means-for-the-future-of-supercomputing/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-the-dods-playstation-power... [0] http://ieee-hpec.org/2012/index_htm_files/Barnell.pdf http://ieee-hpec.org/2012/index_htm_files/Barnell.pdf
- michaelmrose 10y agoIt's reasonable to suppose that the ps3 was an edge case. Current gen consoles didn't cost more per unit to manufacture than they sell for nor if we continue to see x86 machines will the next generations
- digi_owl 10y agoIIRC, it came to be because Sony and IBM tried to make Cell the next big thing in supercomputing. But the concept proved to be a massive hassle to program.
- djsumdog 10y agoI remember articles about the massive racks of PS3s in Linux clusters for people who wanted to use Cell for large parallel computing. Did Sony/IBM every actually release viable/affordable Cell hardware outside of the PS3, or is Cell pretty much dead now?
- ianhowson 10y agoCell is dead. There were a few similar machines -- Intel IXP comes to mind. They were universally difficult to program and did not provide a significant performance advantage once multicore x86 became cheap. ARM chips took the many-independent-cores end of the market, GPUs took the wide-SIMD end, and may history show that the Cell approach was a failure.
- shinymark 10y agoOne funny side effect of this was that dev kits for the PS3 were rack mounted 1U (?) units. As a game developer this was ridiculous because we each had one of these on our desks, usually with a tv sitting directly on top of it. Thankfully this was changed to something reasonable on PS4. The PS4 dev kits are pretty cool looking IMO.
- micheljones 10y agoSony's main motivation in providing OtherOS functionality was, as always, money. By being able to run alternative OSes PS3 was classified as a computer and not a console for tax purposes, and Sony had to pay less tax because of that. I'm not sure what the actual numbers are tho, so someone else feel free to chime in.
- drvdevd 10y agoI really hate my PS4 and PSN and want to run Linux or FreeBSD on it. I'm not much of a gamer, but I paid about $100 for a couple games I planned to play eventually. Then I got locked out of PSN and really can't be bothered to call Sony about it. So now I have this awesome machine that should be running something actually interesting. I could care less about pirating games.
- agumonkey 10y agoFirst time I wanted to own one now.
- agumonkey 10y agoAfter seeing the talk, very impressive work. Lots of mess research and missing parts to fill. Slow clap
- 0x45696e6172 10y agoWatch the talk here: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016 https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016
- djsumdog 10y agoThis talk is hilarious and amazing. The PS4 hard drive plugs in over USB? The Southbridge is an ARM SoC? All the PCI devices are mapped into a single glue device? WTF?! So what's more insane, the PS4 or the hacked together manufacture kernels and binary blobs on Android phones?
- The_Sponge 10y agoUSB HDD: a cost saving measure: they already have a usb bus, why add sata on as well? we're talking a platform that's going to last for a decade possibly... arm soc southbridge also not a surprise, xbox one has something similar. enables the console's rest mode to be "smart"
- djsumdog 10y agoBut in the talk he says the BlueRay player is hooked to the SATA bus. There is a SATA bus on there. I know the xBox one hard drives are removable. Are PS4s the same way? (I haven't owned either; more a PC gamer). Maybe with their device hacks, USB was easier to plug-n-play than SATA?
- subliminalpanda 10y agoPS4 hdd is indeed removable/upgradable. I swapped my 500gb for a 2tb. Sony even gives out instructions on how to do it: https://support.us.playstation.com/articles/en_US/KC_Article/Upgrade-PS4-HDD https://support.us.playstation.com/articles/en_US/KC_Article...
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoMy WAG (all points are conjecture): 1) There's only one SATA port on the southbridge. 2) USB-SATA chips are cheaper than SATA port multiplier chips. 3) They needed a USB hub anyway for other stuff.
- notyourwork 10y agoEverytime console hacking comes up I start to wonder how well a manufacturer would do if their next console was open. Would they see a decrease in legit purchases if the console was open for hacking and exploitation? I would think it would be a lot like the PC game market which as far as I can tell is still thriving today. So assuming there is no economic impact, what is it that makes us want to lock down consoles (similarly cell phones) when we do not do the same to the personal computer we hold so dearly? It is a fascinating story that I suspect is due to timing and when devices hit markets but curious what others think about this.
- Klathmon 10y agoHacking and cheating are huge problems on PC. And without a locked down client, these things run rampant, and can very frequently ruin a game. Keeping the system locked and having it balk at every modification makes it much easier to control that.
- notyourwork 10y agoIt does simplify things but do you feel if cheating could be curbed we still need locked down consoles?
- eropple 10y agoNot the OP, but I do, in that I think that the piracy concerns do still exist. PS4 piracy is effectively impossible, and that's a very powerful argument for the platform holder to continue locking it down. One that both game developers and other application providers appreciate the control the platform provides; controlled platforms like phones and consoles are the only places that most people ever see YouTube ads, for example.
- TwoBit 10y agoYes, because they are locked down for other reasons too, such as the fact that they are sold at a loss, with the assumption they are used for gaming and thus can recoup the loss.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- shmerl 10y agoWhat about running some demanding games like The Witcher 2?
- faragon 10y agoAmazing work. Hector Martin (@marcan42) is an incredibly talented hacker. I still remember his post for enabling the hardware virtualization of the CPU in his laptop, an Acer Aspire 5930 [1], that had it disabled in the BIOS, and it was not user serviceable (I had a similar laptop, with smaller screen, so his post was useful for me). Also his hacks and comments in a Spanish forum [2] for the PS2, Nintendo consoles, and others were plenty insightful. Then the PS3 hack. And now, getting Linux working in the PS4, even with 3D acceleration (without help, just with few specs found in the web (!!!)). It is mind blowing :-) [1] https://marcan.st/2009/06/enabling-intel-vt-on-the-aspire-8930g/ https://marcan.st/2009/06/enabling-intel-vt-on-the-aspire-89... [2] https://www.elotrolado.net https://www.elotrolado.net
- yo-code-sucks 10y agoIt doesn't take a genius to enable a CSR (CPU Specific Register), intel has the documentation online.
- SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago> I still remember his post for enabling the hardware virtualization of the CPU in his laptop, an Acer Aspire 5930 [1], that had it disabled in the BIOS Ha! Wow, I remember this too. I had a similar model (a 5760 I think?) which was my main "work" laptop at the time. I remember running this in the vague hope that it would work knowing full well that I could have a brick on my hands and it did work, flawlessly. Amazing how these things pop up again years down the line.
- shasheene 10y agoMarcan mentions FreeBSD is not a particularly secure OS. My understanding is the BSDs have a reputation for being more secure than Linux. Is this not the case?
- ndesaulniers 10y agoAll software sucks...everything is broken.
- h1d 10y agoHe also mentioned that BSD is dying but then again I thought it's the license that keeps them afloat.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoHe was probably making a reference to the old "BSD is dying" Slashdot troll copypasta.
- feld 10y agoWhich is actually referencing old Netcraft reports
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoFreeBSD has a bunch of not-especially-secure stuff in it, but it's generally assumed that you've read the manual and will harden and tune a system based on its role. As a project, it doesn't have "secure by default" as a primary goal in the same way that OpenBSD does (not to say that FreeBSD developers don't care about security, just that security isn't elevated above other concerns to the same degree).
- vertex-four 10y agoOpenBSD has a reputation for being more secure than Linux, because OpenBSD's developers put significant effort into security research and secure coding practices. People who expand this to other BSDs are mistaken. FreeBSD is a good general-purpose OS competing in the same space as Linux, and NetBSD will probably run on your toaster.
- jokoon 10y agoI wonder if one day there could be some kind of law forbidding manufacturers to restrict running software on the hardware they sell. It seems like an anti-competitive practice.
- unicornporn 10y agoPS4 is x86. Would it be possible to eventually run Windows on these machines, making it a cheap Steam gaming computer?
- arianvanp 10y agoIt is not a classical x86. It might have an x86 instruction set but that's where its resemblance ends. It's a truly absurdly alien device. The authors had to define a new architecture type in the Linux kernel to get everything to work. I'd advice watching his talk from 33c3 (linked in top comment). It is hilarious.
- unicornporn 10y agoAh, thanks for the clarification!
- rasz_pl 10y agoseems PCIE is the next big thing in dumping firmware, first iphones now ps4.