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Sony PS5 ROM keys leaked – jailbreaking could be made easier with BootROM codes
- MuffinFlavored 9mo agoAs in, you can now craft your own "update" and sign the bootloader/entire package and it will flash? edit: > You still won't get a jailbroken PlayStation 5 with this leak, but it will make it easier for hackers to compromise the console's bootloader. nope?
- peddling-brink 9mo ago> Now that the ROM keys have been leaked (and assuming they are valid), a hacker could then decrypt and study the official bootloader and potentially use that as a starting point to understand how the PS5’s boot system works. This would just allow further study.
- hypeatei 9mo agoHow did the keys get leaked and where are they sourcing this from? Did Sony get compromised, disgruntled employee, what? If there was a breach, I'd expect keys for the PS4 to be leaked as well which would be quite handy. There are soft jailbreaks you can do currently on the PS4, but they're not full on CFW (custom firmware) and don't persist reboots.
- gruez 9mo agoBased on the other comments it looks like it's the decryption keys for the bootrom, which obviously have to be available somehow to every PS5 for it to be able to boot. That means they probably compromised the processor or something, but no need to invoke "Sony get compromised" or "disgruntled employee".
- EPWN3D 9mo agoThe story implies that they're signing keys (ie it says the keys are used to check the validity of the boot firmware). If they were encryption secrets stored on the chip, they'd have been extracted, not leaked.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- m00dy 9mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445107
- naoru 9mo agoThe article says: > According to The Cybersec Guru, this is an unpatchable problem for Sony, because these keys cannot be changed and are burned directly in the APU. I'm just speculating at this point, but what could prevent Sony from anticipating this exact situation and burning several keys in the APU? I mean, eFuse is not exactly a new technology. That way, once a key is leaked, Sony could push a firmware update switching the APU to a new key which hasn't been leaked yet.
- ghshephard 9mo agoWould that not break every other firmware release that relied on that older key?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- toast0 9mo agoYes, but console vendors generally prefer not to allow downgrades. So if v1 is signed by key A, v2 is signed by key B and invalidates key A; a console that installs v2 wouldn't be able to install v1 after, but that's not a problem for Sony. But, I'm not sure how many companies would be able to manage their keys properly to ensure that someone with access to key A doesn't have access to key B. If these are asymmetric key pairs and the device side key was extracted from the device... Switching keys wouldn't help, and it's not a huge deal by itself --- having the device side key doesn't allow you to make a firmware image the device would accept.
- wincy 9mo agoFun fact, the Nintendo Switch blows fuses [0] when they do a patch that’s for security/jailbreaking. If I recall there’s something like 12 or 16 fuses they can employ over the life of the product to ensure you can’t rollback updates that prevent piracy. Nvidia builds these fuses into the board. So if you’ve blown 4 fuses you can’t do a patch that requires only 2 fuses to have blown, it’s a pretty wild solution. Edit: it’s actually 22 fuses [0] https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Fuses https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Fuses
- sagacity 9mo agoThis is probably based on the research outlined in this ccc presentation: https://youtu.be/cVJZYT8kYsI https://youtu.be/cVJZYT8kYsI This also goes into a bit more detail regarding how these keys are used.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago> This isn’t the first time that Sony has had to deal with a security crisis with the popular PlayStation family. The PlayStation 3 was previously hit with a vulnerability when the company made a mistake with their cryptography on the console, allowing users to install homebrew software and allow piracy and cheating on popular titles. Probably could have been avoided if Sony kept the Linux version of the Playstation still alive. Imagine what the (console) world would have looked like, if it was still alive. I never got the chance to even try it myself before it was gone, but I'm sure a lot of the homebrew community's energy could have been redirected towards it instead, hitting two flies with one swath.
- Sesse__ 9mo ago> Probably could have been avoided if Sony kept the Linux version of the Playstation still alive. The causality here is backwards; Sony removed Other OS support precisely because the first jailbreak (a glitching attack) relied on it.
- mschuster91 9mo agoIt only ever was present because Sony wanted to cheat EU import tariffs - by allowing other operating systems, it could be imported under the lower general-purpose computer rate. IMHO, removal of this feature should have triggered Sony having to pay back the amount of taxes cheated.
- lawlessone 9mo agoI recall they lost a bit on selling the consoles to the USAF that were used as computer cluster. (The consoles afaik sell/sold? at below cost and rely on games to make up the extra cash) So they lose money on consoles that aren't having games bought.
- dfxm12 9mo agoThe consoles were reportedly selling at a profit (at least in the US) by 2009. Reports about the USAF condor cluster surfaced in 2010.
- Thaxll 9mo agoI guess this is similar to TPM / secure boot on a pc?
- bri3d 9mo agoThis is the same hardware as a PC, but TPM and UEFI “Secure Boot” happen way, way later in the boot process and aren’t present here; this is the hardware root of trust, in this case the AMD PSP boot firmware, which runs on an ARM system alongside the x86 cores. Intel’s version is called Boot Guard and runs on a combination of x86 sub-cores (TXE) and ME.
- monocasa 9mo agoInterestingly, I've heard on the grapevine that AMD PSP was originally from the hardware security in the Xbox One (ie. the third line of Xboxes), hence why it's an ARM core. And it's also another branch in the lineage that also includes the Pluton security module.
- OptionOfT 9mo ago> https://thecybersecguru.com/news/ps5-rom-keys-leaked/#:~:text=for%20mass%20piracy.-,THE%20EMULATION%20SCENE%3A%20A%20TURBO%20BOOST%20FOR%20SHADPS4%3F,-This%20is%20perhaps https://thecybersecguru.com/news/ps5-rom-keys-leaked/#:~:tex... Nasty filler to add that to the page. General question: (I don't know enough about cryptography) Are these symmetric keys or asymmetric ones? Both allow you to decrypt, but only the former would allow you to make changes to it, whereas the latter would still require you to find an exploit in the next stage. I think?
- nopurpose 9mo agogiven that there is no dev mode or ssh server running on a console, how do they even read low level binary code such as boot loader? Do they transplant memory chips?
- MSFT_Edging 9mo agoChip-off is a common way to retrieve the ROM of embedded devices. It often requires multiple chip-off reads and a reconstruction of the striped data across the chips.
- bri3d 9mo agoIn this case, by using fault injection to induce a glitch into a test mode which bypasses secure boot and loads code from SPI, combined with a SPI emulator (and I2C to send the boot vectors). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cVJZYT8kYsI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cVJZYT8kYsI
- Retr0id 9mo agohttps://xcancel.com/notnotzecoxao/status/2006525981113332025 https://xcancel.com/notnotzecoxao/status/2006525981113332025 > news sites are overhyping the release/leak/whatever of the rom keyseeds, saying it could be used to fully unlock the ps5. i've already stated on twitter and i'll state it again. rom and seeds alone are NOT enough to pwn a ps5, you either need fuses and nandgroups to complement it > ... or alternatively, you need to find bugs in the rom that you can use to exploit the ps5. neither of these are easy and require immense work. also, decapping a ps5 apu to retrieve the fuses optically will prove useless to the end user because those fuses are encrypted/xored/obfuscated
- croes 9mo agoNitpicking: the media isn’t completely wrong. It can be used it just needs sone extra conditions but if they are given the leaked keys definitely help.
- tonyhart7 9mo agodo you have any resource for outsiders to learn/delve into these topics ????? I always fascinated by works of people that try to reverse engineer this secure system
- jaredwy 9mo agoHacking the xbox is a great read The Hardware Hacking Handbook by no starch is a good modern intro.
- fbias 9mo agoTake George Hotz as an example. He’s not in this thread and I doubt he wants to swing his massive dick but he’s a poster child for a pattern that comes up. Here are a few. - Precocity and curiosity. Access to tech, resources, ways of actually getting answers instead of just hypothesizing. Though a curious mind will always conjure theories of all sorts. - Working on an assortment of devices. Recent, old. Take them apart, ask how do they work. Read up about how they are constructed. Repeat. - Robotics. Dead give away because robotics means embedded and embedded knowledge is gold. As is electronics knowledge among all the knowledge of how sensors actually work and what they do. You don’t wake up knowing how software and hardware interfaces. Along with learning this you learn a ridiculous amount regarding protocols, tools like logic analyzers and oscilloscopes, and patterns that repeat again and again. [0] - Free time. This one is a given. This shit takes too long and all you’ve got are hunches along the way. Take the recent CCC presentation on Miele appliances. The young presenter practically gives the punch line away: he fixes his parents’ house appliances, he rummages forum posts looking for information. He reads data sheets of processors and knows what pin does what. He looks at what others have done and wonders “what if?”. His whole presentation was so textbook and the appliance is an early 2000s model that it’s begging for someone with a shred of curiosity to take it apart and learn how it works. He finished by successfully dumping the firmware even when he thought it couldn’t be done. Along the way his “hunches” show he knows how things work because he’s worked on it before. The only people surprised are people who haven’t done it. He was going to succeed before he began - that’s how prepared you need to be. Now, if you’re not a super talented 12 year old, that’s okay. Start programming microcontrollers and get comfortable with reading voltage levels and signals of GPIOs and peripherals. Learn how your firmware gets loaded at startup. Build some basic protocols and confirm on a logic analyzer. Decode your work with your eyes. Reading binary and hex should be second nature. Read and decode a USB protocol. An SPI protocol. And don’t complain it’s too much work. [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C1C-DrRZAfw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C1C-DrRZAfw
- TheRealPomax 9mo ago... you mean every PS still uses the same key?
- t-3 9mo agoI've been firmly convinced for a while now that Sony purposely doesn't discourage jailbreakers too strongly. They quietly win loyalty by being just a little friendlier than Nintendo.
- downrightmike 9mo agoOdds are the Japanese leadership in charge of the hardware can't use a computer, so doesn't understand them. Ref: https://www.pcmag.com/news/japans-cyber-security-minister-doesnt-use-computers https://www.pcmag.com/news/japans-cyber-security-minister-do...
- monocasa 9mo agoThere's a bunch of keys. Some are in mask rom, and would be incredibly expensive to make different per console.
- neilv 9mo agoI hope this doesn't lead to further cracks, and PS5 multiplayer games being overrun with cheaters. Once PS3 was cracked enough to run game mods, every PS3 GTA freeroam session was overrun with obnoxious cheaters, ruining it for everyone else. (Sorta like the tech industry.) In most computer tech things, I'm all Linux, OpenWrt, Coreboot, GrapheneOS, etc., but the game console is one thing that that I like being locked down.
- doublerabbit 9mo agoI don't, your forced under the mercy of that they keep supporting. At any time they can render your console usless and force you to upgrade. Consoles are e-waste in my eyes, perfectly good for other uses but liocked to what the vendor wants to give. Limited by the hardware that's given and then nagged to buy latest model. Why am I not allowed to turn an old PS4 in to a Linux router? It has a beast of a CPU, USB ports and suports SSD's, what's the issue?
- neilv 9mo ago> Why can't I turn an old PS4 in to a Linux router? I simply sell my game consoles when I'm done with them. They would make terrible Linux routers, even if they were unlocked.
- doublerabbit 9mo agoSure, you can do that. However the taste knowing that I will soon be nagged to update with less features working makes it a waste, I paid $$$ for it. Shouldn't I be allowed to repurpose it for other uses than just a console when it becomes EOL?
- neilv 9mo ago> Shouldn't I be allowed to repurpose it for other uses than just a console when it becomes EOL? Yes, once hardware becomes some kind of end-of-use, end-of-support, or end-of-life (exactly what, to-be-determined), the brand should be required to unlock any aspect that hasn't already been unlocked, so that people can reuse the hardware. (And maybe put the unlocks in escrow before then, in case the brand goes out of business.) There are also situations in which hardware should be unlocked while within use and support. But probably not for a given gaming device, or not in a way that permits that hardware be used as the gaming device while unlocked. Gaming consoles are a very rare thing that I want locked down, as long as I am sharing whatever pool of online gamers that device accesses. (Because online gaming has way too many people who haven't yet learned to play well with others, and cheating in multiplayer games is a thing that many do.) And the fact that I have less control and ownership of a gaming device is one of the reasons why I use a dedicated device for gaming, and also isolate it on the guest VLAN.
- shipscode 9mo agoJailbreaking, emulation and gaming communities are so far gone at this point that it's hard to understand the impact here.
- lpcvoid 9mo agoWhat do you mean?
- doublerabbit 9mo agoiOS hasn't had a jailbreak since ios 15.5, or 17 if you own a iPhone 11. Nintendo DS is now kind of EOL. So the era of Flashcarts and the likes are gone. I remeber the toothpick wrapped in tinfoil to flash a custom firmware trick and applying it to my DS. The recent lawsuit kind of killed the main provider to these carts. PS3+, Nintendo Switch have had e-fuses which now look out the console when attempting CFW. PC Games are now protected by Denuvo which are almost impossible to crack apart from a couple of folk, one who is slightly mental and another who only does racing games. The android bootloader is being locked down to stop custom firmware. Microsoft is attempting to lock the user out unless you upgrade to Windows 11 with TPM. Emulation is another game, but Nintendo throws a lawsut if you attempt. Sony is locking down by having to dump your own firmware although I am not sure about Xbox emulation.
- shipscode 9mo agoExactly. Not only that, the downstream effects and consolidation on platforms like Discord, Reddit, etc that heavily regulate the operators has a real chilling effect on making these tools and experiences less user-friendly than in the past. Feels like the golden era is way past us for people who have been in the game for a while.
- eek2121 9mo agoPlease see my comment above.
- galleywest200 9mo ago
- mystraline 9mo agoOh the travesty! People now have the keys to unlock hardware they paid money to and legally 'own', and can inspect their legally owned hardware as they choose! /sarcasm