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PS3 Root Key Found
An anonymous reader writes "The PlayStation 3 'root key' used for code signing has been found by GeoHot. This enables running homebrew without the need for psjailbreak-style USB-devices, and also provides hope for those at firmware version 3.55 that currently cannot be downgraded. The key also cannot be changed without hardware modifications. Oops."
No, this is the metldr private key. fail0verflow wasn't able to find that one as it required a metldr exploit
I can encrypt/sign anything on psp now.
I wonder how long until the lawyers start raining down from the sky.
That sounds... very nice. I mean, assuming they are falling a long enough distance, that is.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Neither. Sony botched their PKI implementation and the 'random number' they were using for their seed was anything but random. In fact it was the same every time! That made it trivial to solve for the key. Oops.
This went undetected for years until they ... removed Linux.
Since they basically did a "bait and switch" with the PS3.
When I bought it, it had the OtherOS feather AND I could do all the online stuff...not now
When I bought it, it had backwards comparability for almost all PS2 games...not now
So it appears to me that in a sense the "hackers" have returned my property that was stolen from me by the "legitimate corporation"
I doubt that Sony will learn anything from this, and after our family owning a PS2 and 3, the next console I buy will be Xbox...I had no idea a company could be dysfunctional enough to make me regret not buying a MS product.
Still think revoking the "Other OS" function was a good idea?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Despite all the people claiming this is a dupe, it isn't. This is getting the PSP private key from inside the PS3.
They put the PSP private key on the PS3, presumably so you could buy games for your PSP through the PS3 and have the PS3 do all the heavy crypto work instead of encrypting it on the store end.
Presumably, they figured "hey, the PS3 is unhackable, it is OK to embed the super secret key to PSP software in it". But then the PS3 got hacked.
I wonder how long until the lawyers start raining down from the sky.
That sounds... very nice. I mean, assuming they are falling a long enough distance, that is.
*mumbles something about lawyers being full of hot air, thereby reducing terminal velocity to a survivable speed*
Yeah, because GeoHot is wrong in what he is doing?
How should he have released the key to the rest of us? We all have a sacrosanct right to own our property, and I don't give two *$#% if somebody uses it for piracy. I applaud what he has done here, and in fact, it has finally made me consider actually purchasing a PS3.
If Sony does brick all the consoles, don't blame GeoHot. Blame Sony, because they are the ones that have acted in a morally repugnant fashion for years.
The second generation PS3s had the PS2 graphics chip in them, but took out the Emotion Engine CPU which was run in emulation.
Later PS3s have neither the PS2 graphics chip nor the Emotion Engine CPU, and are not able to run PS2 games in emulation at all, regardless of what the firmware says.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
No, this is the metldr private key. fail0verflow wasn't able to find that one as it required a metldr exploit
No. fail0verflow had no interest in getting that key. Why? Because they're about homebrew, which they can already do, and they're (officially, at least) against piracy, which the metldr key would simplify.
There was a question asked about this at the end of their presentation. They basically said "Yeah, we don't have that key - we don't give a shit about it. Of course you can get it using the same method we just told you about.".
On his website he credits those respontible. http://geohot.com/ Don't blame the other middle men. Geohot gives credit where credit is due.
Since the lame submission doesn't bother to link to the /very/ source that the article is about, I'll paste it here.
GeoHot did something Sony didn't like, and therefore Sony punished you.
Hopefully this teaches you something about buying Sony products.
To quote someone who said one correct thing today, "you really should consider making posts based upon facts". Read What difference does the firmware version make for CD and SA-CD? for an intro to the firmware issues I was speaking of. I know people who purchased the PS3 when firmware V2.00 added optical output for the format, only to find that capability taken away in the next revision. Since firmware upgrades are not optional if you want to stay on PSN, that's a clear bait and switch move. And if you read through the whole FAQ you can see some of the other limitations that come from Sony giving up on development here before the feature ever really worked perfectly.
I purchased about 20 new SACDs in 2010, from companies like Mobile Fidelity and via the SHM-SACD remasters. That gives me about 80 of them total. Since some of these are the highest quality recordings available, they get an inordinate amount of playtime here relative to the rest of my music collection.
See activity on SA-CD.net to see that many people are still actively using the format, and how many titles are available. Yes, there are probably only a few hundred people in the world impacted by Sony's SACD on PS3 decisions. That doesn't mean those people were not misled about Sony's commitment to supporting the format well in the PS3. I never claimed there were a "mountain" of such people, merely that the mechanics of how they were treated is similar to the situation with both backward compatibility and the Other OS features. This is a regularly recurring behavior from Sony.
For the record, that wasn't there initially. We had to complain to him to get him to add that.
We (fail0verflow) discovered and released two things:
We used these techniques to obtain encryption, public, and private keys for lv2ldr, isoldr, the spp verifier, the pkg verifier, and the revocation lists themselves. We could've obtained appldr, (the loader used to load games and apps), but chose not to, since we are not interested in app-level stuff and that just helps piracy. We didn't have lv1ldr, but due to the way lv1 works, we could gain control of it early in the boot process through isoldr, so effectively we also had lv1 control.
With these keys we could decrypt firmware and sign our own firmware. And since the revocation is useless and the lame "anti-downgrade" protection is also easily bypassed, this already enables hardware-based hacks and downgrades forever. Basically, homebrew/Linux on every currently manufactured PS3, through software means now, and through hardware means (flasher/modchip) forever, regardless of what Sony tries to do with future firmwares.
The root of all of the aforementioned loaders is metldr, which remained elusive. Then Geohot announced that he had broken into metldr (with an exploit, analogous to the way we exploited lv2ldr to get its keys) and was thus able to apply our techniques one level higher in the loader chain. He has released the metldr keyset (with the private key calculated using our attack), but not the exploit method that he used.
The metldr key does break the console's security even more (especially with respect to newer, future firmwares - and thus also piracy of newer games), and also makes some things require less workarounds. Geohot clearly did a good job finding an exploit in it, but considering a) he used our key recovery attack verbatim, and b) he found his exploit right after our talk, so he was clearly inspired by something we said when we explained ours, I think we deserve a little more credit than we're getting for this latest bit of news.
There's still bootldr and lv0, which are used at the earliest point during the PS3 boot process. These remain secure, but likely mean little for the PS3 security at this stage.