Sony says it can fix private key crack | Hacker News Reader

Sony says it can fix private key crack

thinq.co.uk

26 pointsMithrandir21 comments

My guess? The suits at Sony, being as incompetent now as they always have been, still haven't realized the seriousness of their situation.

I'd love to be privy to the email exchanges that must be going on there between their engineers and management...

Alternatively they do have a solution, and it's something to the effect of "nuke it from orbit"/"if we can't have it, nobody can". They already tried to take that approach with OtherOS, so this should get entertaining if that's the case.

My sentiment exactly, wonder if the solution includes something akin to the rootkit they deployed once before.

Here's the problem (picture supplied by first result after googling for ps3 nand motherboard):

http://s200.photobucket.com/albums/aa138/ejsid/infectus%20ps...

The keys are hard-coded in hardware and the content in question lives on a TSOP NAND device on the motherboard. No matter what Sony does, they can't prevent you from flashing your own code, signed with the old keys, to that onboard NAND. Whether you de-solder it and socket it, or use some other sort of hardware device, Sony is screwed for old hardware.

If you jailbreak your PS3 before they push out the security update then you've won. But that probably isn't very many people at this point. If the security update is non-downgradable and invulnerable to the currently-known exploits then Sony will be back in control of most PS3s.

If I can resurrect my PS3 and run *nix natively on it with graphics and full blown access to the co-processors I'd buy a second one for gaming.

The main problem is the memory limitations of 256MB+256MB but with careful configuration it can be just OK.

I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up making the PS3 ubiquitous leaving all the other consoles behind. Even in spite of the poor higher management coming from old media (the ones pissing off traditional developers, forcing Blu-Ray and that insane rootkit.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Stringer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootki...

What makes you think it would make the PS3 ubiquitous? What evidence is there that more than a tiny set of people want to run non-built-in services on their PS3s? What would they do with them? I'm a geek and I certainly don't need another box running 24/7...

Different paragraph, different concept. A cracked and affordable PS3 with HD (Blu-ray) media player and trivially changeable HDD can be very attractive. And running a *nix home server on it could be a definite plus for many people, anyway.

Unless I'm mistaken, Sony loses money on every PS3 you buy and use as a Linux box.

Clearly Microsoft and Nintendo should start buying up all the PS3's they can find, and dumping them in the ocean.

If it's really as simple as "purchased console without purchased games == bad for business", then that'd be a killer business strategy.

i didn`t say it was that simple. but no one had mentioned this factor and i thought it worth pointing out that sony might have done the calculation and determined it`s not in their interest to be subsidizing linux computing clusters.

Let's say they update the hardware to include a new public key. They now have the issue that existing signatures don't verify properly. You can mitigate this by having a list of existing valid signatures which can use the old key, but that can't be the best way. Can anyone come up with another?

I don't see why that wouldn't be the best way. How many signatures would there be to check? A couple of thousands?

I do not know how firmware gets signed on PS3, but an alternative could be that all software already is signed with a second key. If so, having new firmware check for that key would close the hole. If they used the same broken algorithm, not for long, though.

That seems like a perfectly good solution to me. Storing a hash of each signature is say 256 bytes and supposing an upper limit of 10,000 signatures, the database file is pretty small. (Better hope they sign the signature database though)

We'd still be able to decrypt the updates and look for holes, or if you have the hardware, just flash your hacked update on the PS3. (We have metldr keys, so we can sign our own loaders)

You'd be able to decrypt updates signed for old hardware, yes. You wouldn't be able to directly reflash new PS3s, though, which is a huge improvement for them.

"We will fix the issues through network updates, but because this is a security issue, we are not able to provide you with any more details,” [Sony] said.

Wrong on two counts. First, Sony can't really "fix" the problem, merely patch over the current situation until their "fix" is compromised. At best they can hold freedom off for a little while longer.

Second, there is no security through obscurity, and failing to explain exactly how they will "fix" the compromised hardware is vainglorious. If a fix does exist, it will be so resistant to exploit that an explanation won't change anything.

It's conceivable for them to have an impervious fix (without conceiving of the fix itself), however experience has shown that the strongest schemes are the ones that have been exposed to the most eyeballs.

I think it's conceivable for a fix to exist such that 1. knowledge of its inner workings could be used to prevent it from being applied. 2. it will take weeks to reverse, by which point most systems will be upgraded. 3. once applied, the trick used to prevent it from being applied cannot be used to remove it.

trivial example: the fix creates a new file "supersecurity" only if the file doesn't exist. by creating an empty with that name, you can upgrade but dodge the fix. but once you've got the supersecurity, you can't delete that file.

I agree with your first paragraph: It is possible for there to be a "fix" where knowledge of its inner workings would expose an easy way to prevent the fix from being applied.

Of course, what I said would still apply: I am less confident that such a thing would be resistant to compromise using other methods. So, if they have this supersecurity patch to put out, after it has been installed they should be eager to tell the world how the systems are now secured.

Maybe the hardware has a second key hidden that wasn't used until now?

They can simply check the date it was signed: if (dateSigned() < 1293775200) { // Verify with old PubKey } else { // Use new PubKey } What is the big deal here?

That doesn't close the hole because I can sign my homebrew or resign my pirated material with an older date. They would have to whitelist all previous content and issue a new key in hardware somehow.

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