If You “Revolt” Over Firmware Update 4.30, Get Yourself Checked

? Wow, that is truly sad! People are digressing that's for sure! I would expect this type of behavior from the X360 crowd but not the Playstation faithful.

Yet the complaining never ceases on psn. The Xbox has dashboards up the ying yang and everyone is ok with it. Some people, like Ben said, just need to step away from a screen and find a hobby that doesn't involve shooting ai in the face.

If they weren't such easy targets, it wouldn't happen so often.

um… obviously not if this article is about complaining PS3 owners……………

But in my experience, while I run into an equal amount of babies on both sides of the fence, I definitely run into more mature people on PS3 far more often.

I've also noticed 360 often seems immune to the same types of complaints PS3 might get.

Last edited by Underdog15 on 10/27/2012 4:14:12 PM

Over at NeoGaf, whenever people start complaining about ads on the 360's dashboard, 360 fans quickly drown the complaints away by defending the advertising.

In my experience, 360 fans rarely complain… why?… because they pay for their services and don't wanna admit (to the competition) that there is anything wrong with them.

Umm… am I missing something? The only thing about the update I noticed was the repositioning of my trophy icon, and it's other trophy-related configurations… Then again, I've been using the MGS4 theme for a while, maybe I haven't noticed it.

Yeah, I don't see it either. I looked all over the XMB and nothing. I guess it sits in the game column over your purchased games. At any rate, I'll just leave it alone. To be honest, when I saw the article I thought people were complaining about them moving the trophy icon.

Same here Sol.

Last edited by AcHiLLiA on 10/27/2012 5:33:32 PM

Not too much for this World 🙂

You need to be on 3.55 to do that level hack you speak of :p.

Yup, still need to downgrade to use it. I already know about all the hacking but unless you are on 3.55 cfw it still won't help. They can hack every game and be online now but still need 3.55 cfw.

Worlds,

Permanent is a very final word.
There have been unpatchable, permanent hacks before that got patched out of existence, I refer you to the previous METLDR key release.
The LV0 keys are equivalent to the previous METLDR hack. What Sony did when that hack happened was to use the LV0 encryption to push a new firmware and bypass that stage in the PS3 loader, and at the same time change the keys for new games.

Now, the LV0 hack is essentially the same thing in the sense that it is a hack at the root level of **software** based encryption in the PS3. However what LV0 does not get you, and can never get you, is the hardware encryption method or hardware key that is burned into the actual CellBE CPU. When a PS3 boots up, a small segment of code initializes directly from the Cell itself into one of the SPEs which is started in a special isolation mode initiated by the hardware. This then starts up the so-called Secure Processing Vault (SPV) which loads the most basic element of the PS3 system software.

The thing about the SPV is that it's a hardware feature, not software. When the System boots it loads it's SPV bootloader directly from the CellBE microcode and uses a hardware key inside the Cell BE to verify anything else that loads and runs within the SPV. SPEs in the CellBE are self contained CPUs with 256KB of their own completely local memory. The contents of the 256KB local store that the SPV has are unreadable by external software, nothing running on any other part of the Cell can read it. The hardware bootstrap and SPV code is hidden and encrypted, it's never decrypted in system memory or any readable CPU memory locations, it all happens inside the secure processing vault.

The SPV can request data from system memory, and it can write to system memory through the Cell itself, but nothing on the Cell can access the internal content of the SPV. The SPV decrypts/validates it's own code and data on the fly. The most devs/hackers can do is force the SPV out of isolation mode, which returns it to the normal SPE mode of execution. However, when this happens the local memory for the SPV is hardware reset before the SPE reverts to non-isolated mode making it impossible to read the content of that memory.

The security of the Cell BE CPU is actually built around the assumption that all levels of system software can and will be compromised. Anything that runs inside the SPV is validated by the SPV before running. So Sony can alter what runs in there, they can replace the entire base loader if they want to, using the SPV as a validation engine. Sony can control what happens inside the SPV regardless of what the hackers do, the hackers have never penetrated the SPV.

The reason this hack only works on earlier firmware is this precise thing. Later versions of the firmware are harder to crack and overwrite because of the alterations Sony has made below the LV0 loader in the firmware. Even if you control the loader mechanism, you can't force an up to date system to load a firmware other than a new Official firmware without first forcing a downgrade and that requires you to scramble the existing firmware.

All CFW past 3.55 rely on forcing the system to downgrade the firmware to 3.55 so it can be replaced with CFW. The system essentially has to be 'bricked' to allow the hacker/user to force a firmware downgrade. The latest CFW does not install on top of any of the official firmwares past 3.6.

Think of it in terms of an onion. Each layer of onion flesh is like a layer of security. Working from the center out you start with the CPU's miro-code loader, the SPV initialization, the SPV code in firmware, the LV0 loader, and so forth all the way out to applications running on the system. The LV0 loader decrypts and authenticates software being loaded from disc or BluRay. the additional layers of security such as the BD encryption are loaded and run by the LV0 loader once it authenticates the software being loaded.

Prior to the release of the METLDR keys the picture was similar;
you start with the CPU's miro-code loader, the SPV initialization, the SPV code in firmware, the LV0 loader, then the METLDR and so forth all the way out to applications running on the system. The METLDR did what LV0 does now, and LV0 was there to authenticate packages running at the highest CPU level available outside the SPV. That older loader still exists for compatibility with older games. I don't know whether Sony ever implemented a white-list of checksums for official firmware, but the thought was that they would to prevent new games re-signed with the broken keys from being loaded.

So now that LV0 is broken, all that remains is the SPV. However breaking the SPV would require one of two things. Either someone would have to break the encryption of the SPV code using pure brute force methods since there is no algorithm or public key to start with – this would take more computing resources and time than is feasible. Alternately, the information would need to leak from within Sony or IBM. It's not going to come from IBM, and I would be willing to bet that the actual method and key used within the SPV is known to literally a handful of people. So a leak is highly unlikely.

Based on what I know of the Cell SPV and system software design I would do something similar to what Sony did before to fix this – if I were Sony. The problem that they have is that the LV0 encryption is compromised, and they need to be able to safely and securely deliver new encryption to the system. Because LV0 is used as the primary loader it is used by the firmware installation process to load, decrypt and execute firmware updates. This in turn means that future firmware updates are compromised.

If I were Sony (which I'm not) I would issue multiple firmware updates that use techniques similar to viruses to deliver a payload consisting of a new loader piece by piece in the firmware. Each iteration would add a piece of the jigsaw, but would remain encrypted. The final move would be to send a firmware that 'detonates' that payload by using the SPV to execute and install a replacement lv0 loader. It need not be perfect on the first pass, it just needs to be sufficient to allow Sony to push a firmware with a completely new loader mechanism afterwards. Each update acts as a stepping stone. This has been done before by other security software, and it's not impossible that Sony already put some or all of the pieces in place as a surety against a LV0 hack. I mean let's face it, if you design your system around a CPU that makes the assumption that all system software including the system hypervisor will be compromised, you can't exactly assume no hack will happen. Nor can you make that assumption after the previous METLDR hack. So it would seem somewhat logical to me to have additional safeguards available to allow you to thwart new attacks.

That's just me being logical and using my own knowledge of Cell, system software, security and OS design. I'm not saying that I could implement it personally, nor am I saying that I have the math gifts needed to work on the kinds of encryption/decryption involved in any of this. However, I do know a thing or three about this field, and I do know what's possible and impossible. I also know that if anyone inside Sony said to their management after Firmware 3.6 that the system was safe and would never be hacked again, they needed to be fired then, and certainly now. No system security professional would say that the system was permanently secure. Despite my faith in the hardware level protections of the SPV, I know that if brute force methods were used it's possible to break that too, someone could literally get lucky and find the key earlier rather than later. However, that is very, very unlikely. It's even less likely than someone using an electron microscope to view the Cell at the gate level and somehow reverse engineering the design sufficiently to read the hardware key. But consider how unlikely that is and you get the idea of why I feel that the process is safe.

Hmm, I never even noticed it. I will have to take a look again once I go on.

I just checked and I don't see any icon like that. I do have system update version 4.30 but I don't even see it . People tend to freak out about the stupidest things these days.

what the hell? What singstar icon? All i see is that my trophies were moved and they load up and synch like 10 times faster.

Duo

It actually shows up if you have a EU account funnily enough. My girlfriend was interested in the game. Now we don't have to buy it lol.

I have an American ps3. It showed up when I downloaded a game from that account. Now it is on my US account :p.

Last edited by sawao_yamanaka on 10/27/2012 1:35:26 PM

Its a karaoke game.

This is no way near as embarrassing as the Mass Effect fans epidemic they cause with ME3's ending. I have to admit I found it rather annoying, I have never played Singstar, nor would I want to so the fact that it has been placed on my Game menu is a bit invasive.

What annoyed me more was how they got rid of the Trophy section from the game menu and place it in the network section. Before if I wanted to check my trophies and didnt want to wait for itself to update I could press cancel and look at them, now I have to wait for that sync-up which at times can take up to a minute which is not what you want when you just want to quickly browse your trophies.

It seems these 2 things along with this irritating new PS Store have all just come together in one negative bundle. Ever since I have had the new PS Store everything takes ages to load – sometimes not even loading which really puts me off navigating it.

I just noticed your reply about the trophy list Ghidora. Thanks for the info but it is still annoying that I have to take that extra step now.

Where ? in the XMB ? i haven't seen it anywhere.

oh haha i figured it was the same all across north america. eh! 😛

Got it on mine. I just ignore it anyway. Not even tried it and I don't intend to. Does it bother me no not really like any of the other icons on the Xmb some of them I have not even clicked on as I don't use them lol.

I've seen the image, it did make me sick. And about that trophy list, I hope that they will fix it soon. It's good that those over 835 posters who expressed their distaste for the new Singstar icon has been heard.

I wasn't happy that they stopped Folding@Home(Life With Playstation) but I didn't flip out over it. I hope they actually talk with Seti and bring it back using them instead. I stopped using Folding when I read that one of the packets they ran actually helped Viagra. That was enough for me to say go to he!!…I don't mind donating my internet and electricity to find cures for diseases, but I could care less about peoples impotence issues.

Also I hate the way the trophies need to sync everytime now, that has to be the stupidest change I have seen them do. What's the point? Seriously is there something they could gain from that change? Sure I just read Ghidoras post above and learned that I can turn that off, but why should I have to do that? It should be the opposite way around, I should have to turn that on.