Tag Archives: psn

PS3: Registry viewer and PDB generator

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Hi all,

Here’s a quick post to share these small tools I wrote.

First, there’s  a .pdb file generator, it’s useful to install demos, I wrote this 6 days ago, but didn’t want to release it, I didn’t want people to use it to pirate PSN games, but it turns out it only works for demos… Even if it installs full retail games, they won’t run because you still need a license to run them. Also, two other people released similar tools (but much better, with more customization, good UIs, etc..) so I don’t need to keep this to myself anymore!

Second is a registry viewer! The /dev_flash2/etc/xRegistry.sys file contains a lot of interesting stuff, mostly your user settings, but it also contains some settings that you cannot change through the XMB (like QAMode or debugSoftwareUpdate, etc..). The file format is quite weird, SKFU attempted to reverse engineer it but didn’t really succeed, but thanks to Matsy who figured out how to link the keys with their values, I was able to understand the file format (most of it anyways) and write this app.  It’s just a crappy tcl/tk script that I wrote real quick! I’m really bad at UIs so I thought I’d put a quick and dirty tcl/tk script to build the UI for it.. it’s not much, it doesn’t allow you to change values, so don’t pay it much attention. Matsy is working on building a QT application to allow you to view and edit the registry values, so be patient, in the meantime, you can use this simple viewer to check out the contents of the file!

You can grab these tools (and possibly other stuff I might write in the future) from my new git repository at : http://github.com/kakaroto/ps3utils. They are both released under the GPL license.

On a side note, I just upgraded to firmware 3.42, so I’ll be taking a bit less active from the ps3 hacking scene for a little while, until I get enough money to buy a new (used actually) PS3. I also want to thank everyone who donated so far, so… thank you 🙂

KaKaRoTo

PSFreedom news, homebrew and donations

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Hi all,

I suppose many people are now following my blog and you’re all eager to learn more about the latest PSFreedom news!

Important things first : Please stop asking me if PSFreedom will work on your phone, NO it will not work on any Symbian phones and it won’t work on iPhones (see next paragraph though). Stop asking and just accept that and buy yourself a Teensy board or an AT90USB microcontroller or similar and install PSGroove on it, then you’ll have your own dedicated dongle.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to business! I told you last time that NTAuthority almost had the iPhoneLinux port working, well the good news is that it does indeed work and it’s been released! Please read the instructions to get it installed from the wiki. Note however that it only works on iPod Touch 1G, iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G, it will not work on iPhone 3GS or 4G or any other iPod… so please don’t even ask about it!!!!

In similar news, we’ve added support for many new Android devices, the list almost reaches 40 models, and about 25 unique devices are now PSFreedom compatible! Again, you can see the whole list of supported devices in the wiki. I just want to make one thing clear : I made PSFreedom for the N800/N810/N900 phones, but I didn’t port it to android. Although I helped some developers port PSFreedom to new USB controllers, I didn’t port or compile any build of PSFreedom for any Android device, so your thanks should go to those responsible for doing it. This is a community effort and those from the community who helped this project should receive our thanks!

Now, what you’ve been waiting for, what’s new in the  PS3 scene, well, many things. First, I’ve recently joined the group of Mathieulh and I’ve been working with them to figure out how the kernel and payload works! I’ve also recently created a new branch in git for writing custom assembly for the payloads instead of using the hardcoded binary blob from PSJailbreak. I’ve cleaned up the payload used by PSJailbreak as well as documented it so others can read it and better understand how it works. The reverse engineering and information has been provided by the group of Mathieulh as well as some of my own reverse engineering work. You can find the ASM payload file here. AerialX from the PSGroove team is also working on cool payloads so you should check out his git repository too!

Also, Matsy and I have reverse engineered the xRegistry.sys file format and are now able to modify the XMB registry in order to enable new features (QA mode, debug options, etc..), and we’ll be working in the next few days on making a homebrew application that would allow you to change these settings safely.

Now for the sad news.. I will be forced to update my PS3 system very soon, for multiple reasons.. First, I’m getting the PS Move tomorrow and I really want to buy Tumble (PSN game) which looks like an awesome game and I can’t do that if I don’t upgrade my PS3 since PSN is locked for firmware 3.41. I also am a PSN+ subscriber and not being able to connect to PSN and enjoy the content I paid for is absurd and it feels like it’s wasting those 50$ I paid for PSN+. Finally, I had to reformat (and restore from backup, Thank God) my PS3 hardrive yesterday because as I was testing the payloads, I kept crashing the PS3 and I kept shutting it down the hard way which seemed to have corrupted my hard drive. After I restored my backup, all my content is there, but when I try to launch a game it says “To access this content, you must active this system. Go to ‘Playstation Network->Account Management’ to activate this system”, which I cannot do without connecting to PSN. This basically means that the 50+ games that I have bought on PSN are now inaccessible to me. So for all these reasons, I have chosen to update my PS3 to the latest firmware version.

As you all know by now, Sony has fixed the vulnerability we’re using to run homebrew in the latest firmware update, which means that once I update, I won’t be able to use PSFreedom or run homebrew applications anymore. This means that I won’t be able to work anymore on homebrew and custom payloads.. I could try to write something but I won’t be able to use it or test it, so the motivation will not be the same. For that, I’m asking you, those of you who used and enjoyed PSFreedom and are grateful for it or those who would like to see more of my work in the future, that you please donate a little something. Your donation will be used in order to buy a new PS3 that will be used only for homebrew and development. Note that I am not requesting you to donate, you have no obligations to do so and I’m not promising you anything either in exchange for a donation. Also note that, as stated earlier, I do not make ports of PSFreedom to new devices/phones, so don’t hope or expect me to make it work for your phone because you donated something. So only donate to me if you are grateful for everything I’ve done so far and you want to show your appreciation. If you decide to donate to me, then thank you very much! Your donations are very much appreciated and they might allow me to release something cool and useful to the PS3 homebrew scene in the future (but I can’t guarantee anything to anyone of course).

So if you want to donate some money, just click on the Donate button below! If you want to donate some hardware (a PS3 maybe, or a Teensy board or anything), contact me and let me know.

Thank you all for your support!
KaKaRoTo