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Wii Uses Elliptic Curve Cryptography For Saves
An anonymous reader writes "A user at the Nintendo-Scene forums just posted a lengthy post about his discovery that the Wii savegame files are signed and encrypted with NIST B 233 bit elliptic curve cryptography. Could this be the first step for a Wii softmod the homebrew community have waited for? From the post: 'It appears a Wii savegame file ends with a certificate chain. The certificates contains a public keypair (the one that is being "certified") and a signature (another number pair) from the signing entity. The number pairs are stored as a compound 60 bit data (first 30 bytes for the first number, and the next 30 bytes for the second). Hence, the first and middle byte is always 00 or 01 for keys, and 00 for signatures. One can check that the keys are indeed NIST B 233 keys using openssls EC_KEY_check_key function (code forthcoming).'"
Well, I'll just dig out my uplink disk....I think I have an elliptic code breaker in there somewhere
Why is it that we live in a world where our console gamesaves are protected more aggressively than our bank accounts and our identities combined?
Not criminals. Cheaters. They're keeping gameplay fair.
That this likely means the exact opposite. Elliptic Curve Cryptography is relatively difficult to crack (not unlike RSA). More to the point, it's also not liable to factorization attacks like RSA is. Furthermore, the best crack of elliptic curve technology is of a 109-bit key, and still took 3,600 or 15,000 computer-years (whether it's a binary or prime field case, respectively).
Nintendo's not stupid. They've used RSA encryption to keep the average hacker out of DS-wireless homebrew, and this is most likely a mandated response to the Splinter Cell hack that allowed soft modding on the Xbox. It won't stop hacking through security holes in the internet protocols (a-la PSO+BBA), but they're certainly making efforts to prevent corrupted data from opening up softmod paths.
it would seem this way on the surface. but the potential for online games on the wii[see mario strikers charged or big brain academy wii degree for early efforts] means cheats for extra gold coins or whatever could have a negative affect on me. personally I am not interested in hacking my saves and would like to know people I am playing against online are not cheating, so this is something I would request. in my mind as a regular player [I own a wii console four full controllers 2 classic controllers and about 13 games, that makes me a big buyer for them compared to most] I feel that they have done me a service by trying to keep online gaming fair and I've not had anything I wanted to do on my wii hindered by this. just something to keep in mind.
/.er will outrank me here]
for reference I am a linux user and took time out of writing a shell script for a solaris machine at work to write this response. normally your mentality is how I think but this time it doesn't stand up to a little critical thinking from the perspective of a fairly heavily vested party. [I don't know anyone who has spent more towards wii, games, and controllers than I have. though I am sure some
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
Perhaps you don't understand why most
Nintendo does none of this. They encrypt savefiles. So what? This does not impede on your right to do anything. You can play any given game on as many Wiis as you wish. Nintendo is also not suing people to force hackers to halt breaking their savefile encryption. Game developers generally don't want players artificially advancing within games. Perhaps there are statistics stored within the savefile used online. Whatever's in the savefile is up to the game devs, and Nintendo is simply hiding that.
In other words, Nintendo is completely within their rights to encrypt savefiles. In turn, AFAIK, you are completely within your rights to attempt to break that encryption. And in turn again, Nintendo is completely within their rights to push out any updates to change or otherwise enforce their encryption. It's really that simple.
Slashdot puts passwords on its user accounts.
Just another case of Slashdot treating its visitors like criminals.
No, I think there is a much more mundane reason. In the past some of the consoles were broken with manipulated save games, the games didn't properly check the data and so opened a hole. I would guess Nintendo didn't want to take that chance and so added an API which sits between the game and the saved data. As the saved data could be verified for being originally written by the game before the game would even get a chance to have a look at it, it means it is much harder to attack code not written by Nintendo to be exploited.
Disclaimer: I have never seen the API of a game console, this is only a wild guess.
(Assuming that this discovery allows people to write new, arbitrary yet signed data into a save file on a SD card that the Wii will recognize as a "valid" save)
The next step will be to search for an exploit in the console or in a game that allows execution of that data. The final step is to figure out how to get that newly loaded code to do something useful. I know this has been done before, but I'm under the impression that the exploit (in a 007 game) was found by chance. After that lucky break, the code-something-useful part came very fast.
Is there any way to search for such an exploit other than brute force testing of games? Are there things to look for that normal players might see, or do you have to just try to execute code over and over and over in various situations, hoping to find a hole? In short, how can I, a non-programmer, help?
I have hundreds of SNES and NES carts. I would love to be able to run those games on the Wii without having to buy them a second time or wait for N to trickle them out. Now if I can just hack together some Wii wireless SNES and NES pads, I'll be in heaven.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
I think it means encryption for virtual console games etc.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I don't really see a good argument for anyone to modify saved games. There is zero benefit to the end user, unlike DRM on music. If the encryption disallowed use of the saved game, that would be problematic, but if it disallows mods of the saved game, that makes sense. Think modding your saved game to make you a level 10 player, not very nice if this game has to go online.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
While encrypting the save files saved on the hard drive might seem like a logical step to keep people from cheating I don't think it will have much effect. I don't believe that cheating on games that you play by yourself or with friends on the same system (opening up maps for the multi player when you don't have any urge to play the solo game all the way through for one example) is in anyway wrong. However if the save file on the Wii effects online play versus people you don't know then well we have a problem. BUT I am sure that Nintendo doesn't do that since to do that would definitely make online playing a joke when the save files get hacked, and they will get hacked.
Additionally those that would of hacked the save files to install mods are not a majority of players on any system. Most people who own a console do not have the skill set or urge to install mods. While encrypting the save files will slow down the hackers it will most likely not stop them, so unless Nintendo did something stupid and made the Save files have full authority over online play encrypting the save files with elaborate means is just a waste of the players time as the games have to take longer to save.
I know I made a big assumption* in the parent post, but I wanted to ask the question about the second step, if we ever get there.
It's just too bad that there isn't some way to compromise to allow a Wii "sandbox" to play around and develop in without allowing full fledged piracy. Maybe a modified (i.e. slightly crippled to prevent full piracy) Wii dev-kit open to all for a reasonable cost?
Just throwing the idea out there
*I know getting past the encryption will be no easy task, and may not be feasible at all with current technology. IANACR (I am not a cryptology researcher) but I know that elliptic curve encryption is pretty strong stuff, and 300+ bit key is pretty big.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
In terms of bricking consoles, Nintendo's a little bit nicer about it. They'll still brick it, but they'll warn you first "hey, if your console is modded, this update's going to brick it, so you might want to abort now".
By the way, with some games refusing to run without updating, this becomes one of those scenarios where if your console is modded, you have to get games illegally to make them work (assuming pirates have found a way to eliminate the code that forces the update).
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
There is a way to remove updates, it's a small program called Wii Brick Blocker that patches isos. It is rather ironic that Nintendo essentially force people into piracy with their updates...
What? Having a Japanese and American Wii, 4 controllers, 3 nunchucks, 3 classic controllers and 15 games isn't normal?
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
Ironic? Only if you've modded your Wii. I've always considered a console in the realm of "no user servicable parts inside." Course, it's not like Nintendo plans to worry about every possible modding configuration available. Rather, they have a set piece of hardware and a set piece of software. Thus, designers know exactly what they have to code for.
Unlike Windows which you can get to install on damn near anything within reason.
I figure modders should get a second, control Wii if you will, that they can fall back on for games.
As much as I'm for tinkering, it's not like Nintendo's really promoting openess on their systems. Why should the modding community expect it? I feel the same way about the XBox and PS3 (although the PS3 not as much; Sony promoted the Linux part quite a bit).
Guess I'm just old fashioned in some ways. I like my consoles too much to tinker with em.
No.
This means that Nintendo has a clue.
It is signing all the data with a certificate. Proper crypto, not DIY snakeoil ala most DRM schemes out there. The only way to break it is to get to the device key.
If they have done is right the key is per device and hardware protected by a crypto module. From there on breaking this at the crypto level is absolutely impossible.
The consequences are actually the opposite to what the clueless editor posted:
1. No chance for homebrew unless someone steals a cert from somewhere and even then Nintendo can simply revoke it using their online service or in a service pack.
2. All communication from the console to a server and back can be signed with strong crypto so no online game cheating.
As far as the elliptic curve cipher choice, this is a common choice for devices with very limited CPU or memory resources. That is what these ciphers are designed for.
All I can say: Applause Nintendo, applause, well done.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
It is still liable to disassembly attack. If elliptic curve used is sect233r1, as poster assume, that could be useful information for disassembly. If wii use OpenSSL that fact could be even more useful.
no its not, why the fuck haven't you bought the fourth nunchuck yet?
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
What will all the hacker and code breaker types do with their time if all companies stop encrypting stuff?
Balderdash!
'Hacking' save games is just one of the possible uses for this. The most worrying one for Nintendo is that it allows people to write their own code, sign that, fool the console into thinking it's a save game and then look for some program on the Wii which is happy to execute a block of code within a saved game. This can then be used to modify some properties of the console, usually nothing particularly drastic but I'm sure Nintendo don't want to take the risk.
Somewhere in this array of comments everyone forgot to mention that 99% of the time, online-based games store all user data on the server's end, not the client's end. And so you can hack, hack, hack the day away and the game's server will stop you dead in your tracks.
Your ad here.
Another problem is that anti-cheat protection makes developers lazy. Online games typically follow the server-client model and as such, any important calculations that need to be tamper-proof should be done on the server. Unfortunately you've got one of the most popular MMO games, MapleStory, that actually depends on the client to detect if the player has been hit by a monster. They rely on anti-cheat protection to keep a player from bypassing all hit detections and obtaining God mode. The problem is, they've already lost. Their code will never be bullet proof as long as I control the hardware.
...where the police are looking for a violent killer, and then their surveillance locates him, and they all breathe a sigh of relief, as they assume that's the hard part done - all they have to do now is arrest him.
I can't help thinking that there's a wee bit more work to do than just find out what encryption method is being used.
Then again, maybe your average slashdotter thinks that 'breaking encryption' is as easy as 'guessing the algorithm used' :-).
Yes because Nintendo forced you to mod your Wii. Oh wait, no you chose to do that so you could play pirated games in the first place.
Modding save games has very little to do with online play... Typically for an online game, your "save game" will be stored on the server so you can't edit it anyway.
Editing single player save games would have no effect on online play...
To prevent cheating with online games, you want to prevent modification of the game data itself, and modification of the network traffic. However this all gives a false sense of security, because people will still always find a way to cheat.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
This is a save game, not in memory. It now takes 3.4 seconds to load/save instead of the 3.33339 it took without the crypto. Yippie fucking do?
Only for Online-only play. Say a player collects rewards while playing offline, and the developers want to enable him to take them online.
One example that springs to mind is the online Pokémon trading in Pearl/Diamond, where many Pokémon are cheated, which kind of kills the point of it all.
And why exactly would it be impossible to get the key if it's stored in hardware then? It might be impossible without a modchip, and it might be impossible with some kind of other software exploit to get to the hardware, but it's most definitely 'impossible' at all. The xbox 360 uses a similar encryption/signing mechanism (per-box key stored in the CPU, signed and encrypted kernel and savegames), and people have already found ways to get to it. Either through an exploitable kernel that enables booting linux (if you never updated your console) or through a timing attack on the boot sequence (using hardware modifications). After you have the CPU key the whole security system more or less falls apart, because it allows downgrading the kernel, and (afaik, but I'm not 100% sure) hacking/encrypting/signing modified kernels.
So although the security implemented in these savegames is definitely about as good as it gets for now, it is definitely not impossible to break.
"but it's most definitely 'impossible' at all" should be "most definitely not impossible at all" ofcourse, my bad...
No, the most worrying for Nintendo is successful emulators that can run on non-Nintendo hardware. By locking down the savefiles, they retain control over savefiles, and over the ability of emulators to successfully save at all.
AFAIK there is no deliberate bricking, but rather the update process and/or the newly updated system code can fail due to the presence of mods. Nintendo warns the user of this because they don't want an uproar about them sabotaging consoles if an update kills machines with a relatively common mod chip installed.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Actually no, I do not pirate games. I've been importing video games from the US and Japan since the days of the NES. I said it was ironic because if someone like myself had modded the system for imports and then bricked it, Nintendo would in theory have left them no choice but to pirate games or buy another Wii. Thankfully I have not bricked mine and can run imports without any problems. It simply seems odd to me that Nintendo would do something that would encourage piracy.
Next time try not to automatically assume modding = piracy, because it does not, no matter how much the hardware manufacturers like to say it does. If I could buy a mod chip that enables imports but not pirated games I gladly would. The constant erroneous association of modding with piracy by clueless people such as yourself has become extremely tiresome.
I've been tinkering since the NES days, so it's an old habit now! :)
I do actually have a second control Wii, I mainly use it for VC games, but if Nintendo ever get any decent online going I will be able to use it for that as well.
It depends how well the system is designed and how pervasive is the PKI thoughout it. While it may be possible to introduce a MIM (man in the middle) via an exploit or via a timing attack on boot it may end up being prohibitively difficult.
For example, on a well designed system you cannot get the key, because it never leaves the hardware. As a result you have to intercept all requests to the crypto hardware and all replies. Depending on the implementation this may actually be quite hard. It may be useless as well. For example, if the authentication is based on two-way public key crypto (device to executable/servcie and executable/service to device) and both keys are unique most MIMs have very little chance to succeed. In the Nintendo case due to the limitations of its storage system, this can be done only for games that mandate online connectivity. For its bigger "brothers" from Sony and Microsoft it can be done even for games that do not require online connectivity provided that at least some components are distributed or activated via their network services.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
FTFS
The number pairs are stored as a compound 60 bit data (first 30 bytes for the first number, and the next 30 bytes for the second).
Interesting that they can store 60 bytes of data in 60 bits! I think someone made a typo...
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Diablo II had this kind of ability; you could use characters online and offline. As I recall, there was also a mode where you could only use a character online but I never used it. Unlike the Wii, this was important since it supported LAN play as well as Internet play, so a group of friends could get together and solve some of the quests together. Since the game was mainly cooperative, rather than competitive, it didn't affect the play for other people much.
If the only two options are offline and Internet play, then you can do some things to reduce the effects of cheating. For example, you can require that a character for online play be created online, and then played offline. This ensures that the server always has an old copy of the save game file for the character. It can then compare the old and new, and see if it is reasonable for the character to have acquired all of the things it did in the intervening period. Some simple validation of this nature won't stop all cheaters, but it will stop cheaters from getting huge advantages.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Aren't Wii savegames transferable between Wii's? That would indicate that its not per device wouldn't it? Unless its reencrypted during transition which makes that a new weak point.
"Enough of your borax, poindexter! We need action!" - Chief Wiggum
"Diablo II had this kind of ability; you could use characters online and offline."
Um... I'm afraid that Diablo II has no such feature. You can have eight characters on your computer and eight on the server, and they cannot mix. Incidentally, allowing the use of local characters on official servers would have really messed with the economy given the ability to modify savegame files. (You would have had people in chat offering "FREE SOJs in game freefreefree!!!" without it being just another troll.)
(no sig)
I happen to have a modded Xbox and a modded Wii
the Xbox has been my media center for about 4 years. I bought it the day it was easily moddable/hackable. It now plays the anime and movies from my server and also plays my dvds along with the games and imports. I really like the option to pay imports. I do speak and understand english, so there really is no reason I should wait 1-2 years for a game. Or movie...
After maybe 2.5 years the dvd reader died and I couldn't read discs anymore. I bought a replacement dvd player for the xbox and installed it myself, voiding my already dead warranty.
Morale of the story :
1 / I used my xbox in a "creative" way, exceeding by much what MS previewed/allowed me to do with it. I had fun with it, and I didn't have to build or buy a pre-made media center.
2 / When it got broken I just had to buy a small, cheap part. not a full xbox, as a "no user servicable parts inside" box concept would have made me.
Episode 2, the WII
Take story from ep.1, make hardware standard pc stuff as in xbox, rinse, repeat.
Guess I, too, am just old fashioned in some ways. I'm too cheap to have every piece of kit I want, so I like to tinker with consoles to give them all the bells and whistles I cannot afford otherwise...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Yep, it's like the old adage; locks keep honest people honest. Implication being someone with criminal intent to defeat the lock will do so, everyone else is deterred.
The modding community "expects it" because you own the goddamned hardware, it should be yours to tinker in whichever way you like.
When you buy a car, does the dealership forcefully prevent you from using "unapproved" gasoline ? Do they tell you which bumper stickers you're allowed to stick, and where ? Do they come and smash your car with a crowbar if you disobey ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Why does people insist on using it for breaking into the stuff? If you know the cypher and you got the key (it's in there somewhere) you can _create_ stuff that the WII think it has made itself - that way they might be able to get it to do what they want.
Yeah, I don't know how many times my Wii online play has been ruined by cheaters thus far...
I read the internet for the articles.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That math does not seem to work out.
60 b = 30 B + 30 B (huh?)
So which is it, bits or bytes? Oh well, I guess I will go read the article to find out.
No console to date has been bricked from an update downloaded from the Internet.
None.
Playing a game from another region, with a modchip that is designed to remove the region HAS bricked the Wii. It's fairly obvious why. Disc sees that your console is not up to date (1.5U =! 1.5E) and then it patches the flash. Since the TV and some other internal things are slightly differnt--you get a nice white paperweight.
Nintendo is simply covering their asses when it comes to the patches with the note about 'unauthorized technical modification'. While Nintendo can tell that a modchip is installed, the haven't gone out of their way to stop them from working. It would be a simple check via the firmware to disable the entire Wii.
The modchips are not really true modchips at all. They are drivechips, which are in the most basic sense, forcing the drive to read copied disks. the games still authenticate with the CPU, they still check to make sure that everything is signed. The drive is just passing the data along--there is no memory locations on the Wii itself being bypassed or altered.
It DOES have this feature. How could you miss it?
They have both 'open' and 'closed' servers. The 'open' servers accept characters stored on your computer, and have no protection from hacked saves, but they are good for playing with friends who you know aren't cheating.
On 'closed' servers, your characters are created on their server and can only be played online.
The offline character could only be used in LAN games. Online characters were unique to the Blizzard servers and not usable offline, specifically because of the problems involved with using character editors and the like to make your characters godly beyond what was even possible by normal means.
Sig unrelated.
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
You can get 91+ octane gasoline at most if not all gas stations. Hell, if you know how to refine crude oil into said gasoline, you can do it yourself and your car will still work. That's an issue of quality, not brand or some other arbitrary restriction.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Make voting into a video game, outsource development to Nintendo Wii, watch Nintendo become company non-grata in most 'democratic' states of the world.
You can't handle the truth.
If the emulator is supposed to do both the encoding and the decoding it could just ignore that part of the code. After all, a per-machine key won't be verified separately by the software without allowing to feed it a fake key.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Can you modify your game console - that is, are you physically capable of altering its hardware? Sure! You can make it run imported games, homebrew games, Linux, anything you please. Heck, you can turn it into a motion-sensitive coffeepot if you want. However, the console manufacturer never sold you a motion-sensitive coffeepot, and they are under no obligation to support it if that's what you build out of it. To continue the car analogy, this would be like converting your new gasoline-powered vehicle to run on biodiesel, and then complaining to the dealer when it won't run on gasoline anymore. You're completely within your rights to do that, but the carmaker is also within its rights to make you support it yourself by taking away your warranty.
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
I believe you have playing multiplayer games with Battle.net and LAN confused.
Whenever you make characters for single player and LAN or TCP/IP games, any 'open server' will accept them.
However, when you use the Battle.net servers, in addition to an account, the characters are stored on the server side. That's referred to as a 'closed server', since you can only play as characters you made on there, and they are stored on the server side.
Blizzard did say they were going to put in a feature where you could export your battle.net characters so you have a copy locally, but only one way. Mainly, so you couldn't upload a hacked character to the battle.net servers.
slashdot prevents users from applying a CSS filter to their personal copy of their discussion pages to block annoying comments from anonymous coward. Just another case of slashdot treating its visitors like criminals.
As a "player of these games", is it any business of yours how I play my copy of the game and weather I see stuff without going through a particular level? Online games are a different matter and it would be Ok if online savegames were signed by the server.
Nintendo is pulling in a lot of money by selling emulated games for the Wii.
Some of the most common homebrew put on to consoles is of course emulators. The ability for example to put a SNES emulator and every SNES ROM ever on a 1Gb SD card could cost Nintendo a lot in lost sales.
Are you under the impression that the emulator can wave a magic wand and have the commercial game software not do the savegame verification? That seems incredibly unlikely, if any components of the savegame authentication are built into the game software itself.
I've always considered a console in the realm of "no user servicable parts inside."
He who owns it gets to modify it. It's one thing to refuse warranty service on hacked hardware, it's another entirely to deliberatly break it. If they want to keep modded boxes off of network games run from their servers, that's fine since it's their service and servers.
If as some say it's really just a possability that an end user mod may incidentally interact badly with a belssed update, that's just the cost of modifying something. It's important to distinguish between deliberate bricking and unfortunate consequences.
Personally, I think consumer products should be made as hackable as possible without driving up costs unreasonably. The most inexcusable tactic is to implementr cost increasing anti-hacking measures (and plenty of products do just that).
For example, the Wii could willingly load save files that are unsigned, but possably refuse to allow those for online games, or even allow them only if all players involved agree.
It's not a big stretch at all to consider anti-modification tactics to be an illegal interferance with ownership (though the courts haven't understood or validated that arguement for electronics to date). For a real-world example, if I offer to sell you a house, but then send you a "lifetime use so long as you don't put up wallpaper" agreement instead of the title, I have comitted fraud and a court will either force a transfer of title or require a return of the payment.
For another, If I buy a lawnmower, I have an absolute right to modify it in absolutely any way I see fit. I have the right to hire a machinist to help me and he has the right to accept my offer of employment. I can even disable every safety and cut away most of the deck if I'm stupid enough to want that. The manufacturer will not have any standing to sue me for my new "kill mower". Any legal liability I might have would come from people I actually endanger with it, if any. If I only use it myself on my own property with nobody (or their property) in range of flying parts I have no legal worries (but I'd still be a darwin waiting to happen). Why should any other consumer hardware be any different? At least a hacked X-box or Wii won't kill anyone.
On a related note, there is no reason at all that most hardware couldn't include a JTAG and/or LPC header to allow easy recovery from a an reflash gone wrong. They SHOULD provide thaat, but failing to do so is nowhere near as offensive as active anti-hacking.
Clearly, the people who make our video games are far more competent than those protecting those other things like votes, money, identity, etc.
Actually, it makes a sort of perverse sense. It's pretty easy to write bog-standard business applications that do CRUD (in both the database & other sense), but it's not so easy to program a game that has to run at acceptable frame rates.
Actually, the proper car analogy would be, you convert your car to biodiesel and the next time you take it in for maintanence they yank the engine and give the rest of the car back to you.
Yeah, you're right. Game developers will never win as long as there are douchebags like you who want to ruin the fun of the game for everyone who isn't cheating.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Arrg I was gonna mod in this thread but I have to reply ...
Sure, you are free to mod your Wii, but they don't have to support it, and you don't have to run updates (just don't bitch when future games don't run). Nintendo sold you a Wii, they intend to support the Wii. If you mess it up, it's your OWN DAMN FAULT.
It's like if I remove the front left tire from my car, then bitch that Ford won't service it under warranty because I should be free to do whatever I want to my care.
Simple fact is, if you mod your console hardware you run the chance of being shutout of future gaming. Which is why you just don't mod it, or you buy two and have one for games which won't run modded.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I found the PSO exploit when I was cheating the Dreamcast version of the game. PSO "version 2" added a new packet, known as RcvProgramPatch, that downloaded code to the system. Sega used that packet to download assembly code to the client that checked for some of the cheats we made. The packet stayed in the game through the GameCube version, at which point someone else found it and made the BBA homebrew exploit.
Of course, Sega didn't sign that downloaded code, which is why it worked.
Regarding this savegame thing, it's just dumb. There's no reason for them to use asymmetric cryptography on saved games when symmetric cryptography would have worked equally well. Once someone, anyone, can execute code on the machine, the savegame protection on that system will be broken. The only real protection is to use per-device keys - that is what makes Wii saved games secure, not this asymmetric crypto. Sacrificing player convenience for security.
I can't wait until quantum computers end the reign of the 360 and Wii homebrew security systems.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Actually I agree with that UNLESS an update is released with the intent of bricking modified units (I'm not saying Nintendo has or has not done that, I don't know). There's a world of difference between an intentional act of sabotage and a modder-caused incompatibility.
The rest of my comment was similarly directed to the important difference between not supporting mods (perfectly OK) vs. actively defeating them (not OK).
Just another case of Slashdot treating its visitors like criminals.
Worse yet: Slashdot probably encrypts that password before storing it in their database!!! The bastards!!!
Yes. I agree. They are no better than the RIAA. Death to all websites who use passwords and enrypt them before storing them. We want freedom for all!
Btw, what is the username for your PayPal account?
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Why are they encrypting savegame files? I understand maybe a boot sector or even an entire game to prevent copying, but MEMORY CARDS? WTF?
I'd like to think the ideal situation is not to alienate users, even those who aren't buying as many [any] games. They're not microsoft after all.
And given the track record with the GBA/DS so far they're not really causing a fuss.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
And why do you think that is?
"That's one small step for man
.
I'm not sure I understand why they had to use asymmetric encryption. A plain old symmetric algorithm would suffice, since asymmetric methods are only necessary when passing messages between parties. Since the save files are both encrypted and decrypted on-machine, only symmetric encryption is required. This would possibly simplify things, as well as potentially speed them up (since symmetric algorithms are faster). A good symmetric algorithm is usually very compact codewise as well, and much less complicated to implement and maintain. Odd choice on their part, though admittedly for security purposes either can be used to effectively protect the save files (and both are equally vulnerable should the encryption key be plundered from the device).
> Actually, its not so hard either. Neither is elliptical curve encryption. Don't overestimate the difficulty of these things. They might have been hard 15 years ago, but today such things are well documented and a plethora of libraries are available to make it even easier.
Using ECC, you're right, isn't that hard. Using ECC correctly is harder, but not that hard.
Mostly, it's rare. That's the part that gets me.
Given that I haven't seen too many using ECC, even though it has some cool properties like not being affected by advances in factorization, so I have to give them some credit on that one. It makes me feel like the person who designed it had a clue.
I was thinking along the same lines, that the crypto was less about preventing homebrews (though Nintendo probably does want to keep homebrews down), and more about preventing players from hacking into their savegames and "improving" their saved position. But seeing as I don't do much online gaming, I didn't see the point. Now I do.
Now normally I would have nothing against "cheating" in this form: it is more like cheating at solitaire or using house rules an a dinner-table game. But when you are playing with strangers, you need some reassurance that they don't have a whole slew if royal flushes stuffed up their sleeve. If I understand this properly, Nintendo has integrated an encryption method into the savegame routine on the system level for the benefit of the developers, and didn't see enough demand to offer an unencrypted version. After all, homebrew just isn't a part of Nintendo's DNA.
I was wondering the same actually! Wii games /are/ transferrable between Wiis. I've done it myself (specifically to get all the Rabbids games unlocked on someone else's console).
Go ahead and have a blast tinkering, but expecting Nintendo to give you the thumbs up and still support you is idiotic.
I don't expect support from Nintendo, but I do expect them to not destroy the console.
Voiding the warranty just means they won't help me if/when I break it. It doesn't mean they have a right to send a kill signal over the wire and brick my legally-acquired equipment, just because I took a screwdriver to it.
When's the last time someone from Ford showed up to blow up your car, because you installed an aftermarket stereo ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com