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As a boring software engineer nowadays, these hackers "for fun and profit" make me proud of our profession. They're like a Robin Hood version of Alan Turing & c

As a boring software engineer nowadays, these hackers "for fun and profit" make me proud of our profession. They're like a Robin Hood version of Alan Turing & co. working on cracking the Enigma encryption. No matter how tight the black box is, there is always a gap somewhere. I've done some reversing when I was younger, cracked some software and hardware locks, there's nothing as exhilarating as breaking through something that looked impossible. Well done!

iamtedd 5y ago
I love hearing these stories too! Here's a video of someone finally cracking into the Sega Saturn well after the console was current commodity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E&t=202s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E&t=202s
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  He eventually released a commercial product, the Satiator, and I'm happy to say that it works great and is very well supported by the creator himself and the community! For those unfamiliar, the Satiator is an adapter of sorts that lets you load Saturn ISOs onto an SD card and play them via the Saturn's MPEG adapter slot. Unlike many solutions on various consoles that bypass the optical drive, no hardware modifications are required. Your Saturn stays intact; it's truly plug-and-play. This sort of thing is important. Consoles (specifically moving parts, like the optical drives) and physical media from the 90s are failing. Surviving consoles and games can be quite expensive; even thousands of dollars. Emulation is imperfect and introduces lag. Satiator and other flashcarts let us play these games on original hardware and bypass these issues.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Not game related, but this is what I like about the MagicLantern hack for Canon cameras. It's just some data on your card that gets loaded at boot. If you use a card without the data on it, the camera boots/peforms as a regular stock camera. No hacking of the software on the camera itself.
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
      I've always been curious how MagicLantern achieves this. Wouldn't the original firmware need code to boot from SD? Maybe it automatically checks for new firmware on the card and then gets exploited from there? Does anyone know?
      - dylan604 5y ago
        I always imagined it like a BIOS setting allowing you to choose boot device order. The camera looks to see if something is available on the card first, if not then it just boots to camera. It's been so long since I've set up my camera to use ML, but I know I had to upgrade the firmware to a compatible version. Then IIRC, you load the ML data on the card and tell the camera to upgrade firmware again. So it maybe something that it thinks it is a firmware upgrade but just hijacks that process to boot a full thing instead. ???
jackjackk0 5y ago
Just recently bumped into a podcast on the xbox hacker scene (https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/) and was really fascinated by the dedication, ingenuity and talent of these people. I am also amazed that you don't hear often enough stories of them receiving job offers from the companies they targeted/"hacked".
- sph 5y ago
  What's great is that it's mostly done for the street cred. To show off how cool you are, you need to work in the public, and present your results for all to see, for free. "This is how cool I am. I have cracked it before everybody else." They're positioned on the complete opposite of the modern corporate, capitalist Internet, keeping computers open and still cool. For that, I salute them.
  - __alexs 5y ago
    While I'm sure street cred plays a factor there is also good money in being able to break the protections to enable piracy.
    - throwaway09223 5y ago
      Are you sure? How exactly would this be monetized? By publishing the exploit they lose any market advantage.
    - bri3d 5y ago
      I don't think this is true anymore, having had experience in this space. In the "bad old days," you could make a moderate (nothing like Silicon Valley engineer money) sum by selling exploits to modchip manufacturers, as they'd then use this to drive their hardware sales - pretty simple model. The last one of these I remember being particularly popular was the PS3 "True Blue" dongle. These days, exploits aren't particularly useful to drive hardware sales as they're mostly hardware free. So there's not a ton of monetary value - yes, you could try to sell a "custom firmware" for a few months, but once the exploit is reversed, it's game over for your income stream. Cheating is probably the only major revenue stream left in console exploitation, and as far as I know it's not popular enough to drive high prices for console exploits. Compared to phone exploits (wanted by nation-level actors and shady security firms for mostly evil purposes), ECU exploits (easier to protect and worth more per install), and PC exploit bug bounties, I think console hacking is pretty low on the lucrative scale, which is why so much more of it is done in the open.

iamtedd 5y ago

I love hearing these stories too! Here's a video of someone finally cracking into the Sega Saturn well after the console was current commodity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E&t=202s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E&t=202s

JohnBooty 5y ago
He eventually released a commercial product, the Satiator, and I'm happy to say that it works great and is very well supported by the creator himself and the community! For those unfamiliar, the Satiator is an adapter of sorts that lets you load Saturn ISOs onto an SD card and play them via the Saturn's MPEG adapter slot. Unlike many solutions on various consoles that bypass the optical drive, no hardware modifications are required. Your Saturn stays intact; it's truly plug-and-play. This sort of thing is important. Consoles (specifically moving parts, like the optical drives) and physical media from the 90s are failing. Surviving consoles and games can be quite expensive; even thousands of dollars. Emulation is imperfect and introduces lag. Satiator and other flashcarts let us play these games on original hardware and bypass these issues.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Not game related, but this is what I like about the MagicLantern hack for Canon cameras. It's just some data on your card that gets loaded at boot. If you use a card without the data on it, the camera boots/peforms as a regular stock camera. No hacking of the software on the camera itself.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    I've always been curious how MagicLantern achieves this. Wouldn't the original firmware need code to boot from SD? Maybe it automatically checks for new firmware on the card and then gets exploited from there? Does anyone know?
    - dylan604 5y ago
      I always imagined it like a BIOS setting allowing you to choose boot device order. The camera looks to see if something is available on the card first, if not then it just boots to camera. It's been so long since I've set up my camera to use ML, but I know I had to upgrade the firmware to a compatible version. Then IIRC, you load the ML data on the card and tell the camera to upgrade firmware again. So it maybe something that it thinks it is a firmware upgrade but just hijacks that process to boot a full thing instead. ???

jackjackk0 5y ago

Just recently bumped into a podcast on the xbox hacker scene (https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/) and was really fascinated by the dedication, ingenuity and talent of these people. I am also amazed that you don't hear often enough stories of them receiving job offers from the companies they targeted/"hacked".

sph 5y ago
What's great is that it's mostly done for the street cred. To show off how cool you are, you need to work in the public, and present your results for all to see, for free. "This is how cool I am. I have cracked it before everybody else." They're positioned on the complete opposite of the modern corporate, capitalist Internet, keeping computers open and still cool. For that, I salute them.
- __alexs 5y ago
  While I'm sure street cred plays a factor there is also good money in being able to break the protections to enable piracy.
  - throwaway09223 5y ago
    Are you sure? How exactly would this be monetized? By publishing the exploit they lose any market advantage.
  - bri3d 5y ago
    I don't think this is true anymore, having had experience in this space. In the "bad old days," you could make a moderate (nothing like Silicon Valley engineer money) sum by selling exploits to modchip manufacturers, as they'd then use this to drive their hardware sales - pretty simple model. The last one of these I remember being particularly popular was the PS3 "True Blue" dongle. These days, exploits aren't particularly useful to drive hardware sales as they're mostly hardware free. So there's not a ton of monetary value - yes, you could try to sell a "custom firmware" for a few months, but once the exploit is reversed, it's game over for your income stream. Cheating is probably the only major revenue stream left in console exploitation, and as far as I know it's not popular enough to drive high prices for console exploits. Compared to phone exploits (wanted by nation-level actors and shady security firms for mostly evil purposes), ECU exploits (easier to protect and worth more per install), and PC exploit bug bounties, I think console hacking is pretty low on the lucrative scale, which is why so much more of it is done in the open.