Right Let's Try This Again: PS3 Hypervisor Hacked

noire said:
Yeah, but is it justifiable that the consumer gets to take a monetary penalty for what was shitty production on the developers' part?

What monetary penalty? You bought a product, and you're not happy with it. That happens. Vote with your dollars, and don't buy any more games from that dev on that platform, until you're satisfied they're getting it right.

I once bought a Saab. It was a piece of shit and I learned my lesson and never bought another one. It cost a lot more than FO3, too.
 
infinityBCRT said:
Access to the RSX is a big deal IMO. That means we could have XBMC-like software running in OtherOS which could handle 1080p.

No, it doesn't. The RSX is completely useless for decoding h264 (especially without nvidia's PureVideo libraries, I doubt they'd handle h264 on the RSX even if there was a PPC version), and there's already OtherOS libraries for scaling on the Cell. I don't mind constantly repeating this, but the only thing stopping XBMC from running in OtherOS is the homebrew community's lack of effort.

The only thing the RSX gives to XBMC is accelerated OpenGL for XBMC's fancy interface. That's it. And there's already a Cell-accelerated OpenGL driver out there anyway...
 
Would this help with region-free-ness? I have a 20gig JAP PS3 that I'd love to play original (NA) PS1 and PS2 games (as well as NA DVDs), but because this isn't a hardware hack I don't know if that'd be possible. Anyone have an input?
 
androvsky said:
No, it doesn't. The RSX is completely useless for decoding h264 (especially without nvidia's PureVideo libraries, I doubt they'd handle h264 on the RSX even if there was a PPC version), and there's already OtherOS libraries for scaling on the Cell. I don't mind constantly repeating this, but the only thing stopping XBMC from running in OtherOS is the homebrew community's lack of effort.

The only thing the RSX gives to XBMC is accelerated OpenGL for XBMC's fancy interface. That's it. And there's already a Cell-accelerated OpenGL driver out there anyway...

Wasn't something similar to XMBC being developed for PS3?

I believe it was called MagicBOX, or somethingBOX, can't remember clearly.
 
meh every system gets hacked at somepoint.

this makes me sad just because it means more ps3 FW updates when this code goes public
 
Lagspike_exe said:
Wasn't something similar to XMBC being developed for PS3?

I believe it was called MagicBOX, or somethingBOX, can't remember clearly.

Ah, the Spanish group, I remember that. I think it was a frontend for MythTV and/or Freeview, both of which worked just fine on the PS3, but I don't think it ever got past the alpha stage. I think the feature list was just what was possible in theory, given enough effort.

But MythTV not only worked on the PS3 (I actually installed and used it for a little while), but you could even use it as a DVR if you got the right USB tuner. With a patched mplayer, even 1080p mpeg2 was possible. The big killer was that h264 support was rather weak, I'm not sure if even 720p was possible.

It was also unstable, since none of the regular coders on the various projects worked on the PS3, so it was always PS3 users jumping into large projects they weren't very familiar with; pretty much the story of almost all open-source projects on the PS3.
 
George Hоtz said...

Ok, I figured out how to make iso loader. It will be ready in two hours.
January 26, 2010 9:24 AM

A video would be mind blowing, but I doubt it.

Edit: Err... Read the thread a bit more only to see that it was fake. I should refresh more often. :P
 
New post.

Right now, I'm playing with the isolated SPEs, trying to get metldr to load from OtherOS. Interesting thing, I am not using the exploit. I always assumed the enable isolation mode register was hypervisor privileged. It's not, it's kernel privileged, which means using hypervisor calls you can all get to it. So, get to hacking. Here is the code I am playing with.

I'm not that opposed to releasing the exploit, but I think the majority of you are going to be disappointed, even if you do get it working. Unless you have pushed the HV to it's limits, this exploit really isn't going to do much for you...yet. So install OtherOS and start playing around. If people start coming up with convincing reasons why they need the exploit to go further, I'll release it. It's just a waste to release if people can't make use of it.

As far as the GPU goes, I have full access to the GPU memory space 0x2800... But without a driver, it's useless. 3D video card drivers are notoriously hard to write, look at the ATI and NVIDIA ones for linux. The best are still the closed source manufacturer ones. I'm not even sure I believe that the HV restricts video card access, just that the OtherOS driver is 2D. If someone skilled in video card driver development comes forward, and they can explain in detail what the HV is restricting, I'll send them the exploit.

And something has to be done about the comments. Theres a couple of good ones, mixed in with tons of trash. Please, if you don't have something technical and useful to say, don't say it. This is not the place for congratulations(go back to the hello hypervisor post), debates about piracy(go somewhere else, the internet is big), or trying to convince me to do X.
 
Holy crap. So basically, "I've done nothing that wasn't possible before, except allow an RSX driver to be written for linux. Which was probably already possible." Am I reading that wrong? If the routine for shutting down the isolated SPE was accessible at the linux kernel level, it's probably not very useful from an exploit point of view.
 
androvsky said:
No, it doesn't. The RSX is completely useless for decoding h264 (especially without nvidia's PureVideo libraries, I doubt they'd handle h264 on the RSX even if there was a PPC version), and there's already OtherOS libraries for scaling on the Cell. I don't mind constantly repeating this, but the only thing stopping XBMC from running in OtherOS is the homebrew community's lack of effort.

The only thing the RSX gives to XBMC is accelerated OpenGL for XBMC's fancy interface. That's it. And there's already a Cell-accelerated OpenGL driver out there anyway...
So can you do 1080p video in OtherOS using that accelerated OpenGL driver? All I know is that the PS3's native media player can do 1080p video great but under OtherOS/VLC its a mess from my experience. The power is obviously there to do it, I always assumed the hypervisor was the reason why we didn't have better media playback via OtherOS.
 
infinityBCRT said:
So can you do 1080p video in OtherOS using that accelerated OpenGL driver? All I know is that the PS3's native media player can do 1080p video great but under OtherOS/VLC its a mess from my experience. The power is obviously there to do it, I always assumed the hypervisor was the reason why we didn't have better media playback via OtherOS.

Unless the codecs for VLC were ported to use the SPUs on the Cell, it's unlikely that VLC would be at all competitive with the optimized Cell codecs that Sony have done for GameOS / Blu-ray playback.
 
infinityBCRT said:
So can you do 1080p video in OtherOS using that accelerated OpenGL driver? All I know is that the PS3's native media player can do 1080p video great but under OtherOS/VLC its a mess from my experience. The power is obviously there to do it, I always assumed the hypervisor was the reason why we didn't have better media playback via OtherOS.

Scaling video was already Cell-accelerated in mplayer; it was a bit buggy in X, but only one person was maintaining it. Native 1080p video was just waiting on more coders, and OpenGL wouldn't help at all with that.

Nothing the hypervisor was doing was holding back media playback in OtherOS.
 
Sounds like he hasn't got anywhere close to cracking the whole thing open, has got a little confused and is backing out (blaming other homebrew devs is right since nothing of notes been made on the linux side at all + can't rule out external pressure perhaps as a factor?) so seems like the shows almost over. Honestly, it seems like Sony made a system that might last a full generation out of reach of piracy :D
 
SecretBonusPoint said:
Sounds like he hasn't got anywhere close to cracking the whole thing open, has got a little confused and is backing out (blaming other homebrew devs is right since nothing of notes been made on the linux side at all + can't rule out external pressure perhaps as a factor?) so seems like the shows almost over. Honestly, it seems like Sony made a system that might last a full generation out of reach of piracy :D

GameCube was only hacked in its last year or two, if I recall correctly. :p
 
I can't access Digital Foundry right now, can anyone post some quotes/highlights?

And wow @ the PS3 hacker blog post - enlightening to see someone who knows what the hell he's talking about explain the situation point-by-point.

It really does seem like geohot is in way over his head.
 
Dragona Akehi said:
GameCube was only hacked in its last year or two, if I recall correctly. :p
GC was almost certainly hacked sometimes in 2003, less than two years after the console was released.
 
fastford58 said:
I know absolutely nothing about hacking (nor have the desire to learn), but I find this all very fascinating.

Same, im reading this stuff without knowing what half of it means - but still.....i cant stop!
 
avaya said:
Kanna Shimizu
Cell Broaband Engine Security Architect
PhD Stanford
MSc. Computer Science from Oxford University

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cach...edu/~kannas/+Kanna+Shimizu&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk

Clearly not some schmuck.

Given that all new consoles going forward will likely be many-core with possibly smaller vector processors, what's to say everyone starts to take leaf out of this women's book and isolate a co-processor in this fashion?
That's only half the battle.

Maintaining secure standards and developing proper protocols to interface with the isolated processor such that key retrieval is safe and sound is equally important in creating an ironclad encryption platform.

I bet right now as we speak Sony is scrambling on all fours over their code to ensure there is no way whatsoever to gain root key access because of some dumb programming. Otherwise no hardware, no matter how strong, will protect the system.

See any glitch that relies on a certain game to run an exploit.
 
I said it in the last thread and I will say it again. The PS3 is a beast security wise. This Iphone hacker is way over his head and he knew that along time ago. He just wanted to get a few headlines because we all forgot about him. Hacking an Iphone vs. a PS3 is like trying to break into a rundowned liquor store at night for a cheap beer vs trying to break into a high security nuke missile facility and steal the launch codes and a nuclear warhead.
 
so in light of the other blog post, can this even be called a "hack"? Or is he just having fun programming in OtherOS
 
Teetris said:
I knew it, PS3 still unhacked and uncharted

Sounds like good news. I might get flamed but I'd rather PS3 not get hacked. This is solely my opinion so dont start to bash me. Theres ppls on both sides.
 
Cruzader said:
Sounds like good news. I might get flamed but I'd rather PS3 not get hacked. This is solely my opinion so dont start to bash me. Theres ppls on both sides.

I'm both disappointed and relieved at the same time. I'm on both sides i guess.
 
Cruzader said:
Sounds like good news. I might get flamed but I'd rather PS3 not get hacked. This is solely my opinion so dont start to bash me. Theres ppls on both sides.

I'm with you. I don't want it to get hacked because it would mess up the trophy system and I want my shinies to carry over to ps4. :,<
 
jorma said:
I'm both disappointed and relieved at the same time. I'm on both sides i guess.
Same here.

System cracking is like taking candy from a baby nowadays, so it would appear that Sony is the underdog in this fight against a 20-year-old. But I still remember when hacking success was the exception, not the norm, and it's interesting to see these efforts against such a securely-designed system.
 
Fredescu said:
So with that out of the way, the biggest news in this thread appears to be that Sidhe is developing for the PC. Cool.

Also gamejournos continue to not do their own research and just go with sensationalist news when given the chance.
 
I dunno if I'd be so quick to close the lid on this.

I mean he says he got custom hypervisor calls working, right?

Is this not significant? It does the beg the question why he doesn't do something interesting in a custom function (vs just observing memory or writing to it...things he could do without the custom functions), but still...

(Maybe someone else can fill us in on the significance or insignificance of that)
 
Wow have to say this is getting pretty interesting. I was always under the impression no one tried hard enough, it seems to be a pretty hard to nut to crack.

Still I think the battle is just beginning. :o
 
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