News: Oct0xor to speak about code execution via the Blu-Ray drive on the PS3 and PS4 at 36C3 in December & Diablo I ported to the 3DS alongside TwiLight Menu++ 11.1.0 release
Over in the XBOX 360 hacking scene, the Optical Drive (DVD-ROM) was a common source of attack but when it comes to the PlayStation 3/4 scene, this hardware component didn’t see much interest. However, that might soon change as Oct0xor has been hard at work reverse engineering it! Other than that, we’ll also be looking at two 3DS homebrew releases in this article.
PlayStation 3 & PlayStation 4 News: Oct0xor to speak about hacking the Blu-Ray drive in December!
As we all know, the Blu-Ray drives on the PlayStation 3 and 4 have mostly been left to themselves and interest in hacking their firmware was low but that didn’t stop Oct0xor, a security researcher at Kaspersky and PS3/PS4 homebrew developer, from doing some digging of his own.
Hacking the Blu-Ray drive on the PlayStation 3 and 4 might soon be possible but forget about piracy for the time being!
According to a recent tweet, he has been done some substantial work on hacking the Blu-Ray drives of the PlayStation 3 and 4 and this includes:
- Dumping the firmware
- Finding out how it works through reverse engineering
- Getting Code Execution
- It’s important to state that while he’s been able to fully compromise the firmware of the Blu-Ray drive, this doesn’t lead to fully compromised security. In other words, this means that running backups (piracy) can’t be achieved with Oct0xor’s work in its current form
Furthermore, the tweet also states that he’ll be holding a talk at 36C3 about his work meaning that some information and potentially even some form of hack will be become available after it. Similar to previous years, the Chaos Communication Congress, which hosted Team Molecule (PSVita) and numerous others last year, will be held in late December (27-30) in Germany so the talk will be held a few days before the year is over.
To view the full arsenal of talks that’ll be held (and streamed for public viewing) at 36C3, follow this link. Oct0xor’s talk is titled ‘Hacking Sony PlayStation Blu-Ray Drives’.
3DS Releases: Diablo I port & Twilight Menu++ 11.1.0 with DS Browser Support
You can now play Diablo I natively on the 3DS although expect bugs and poor performance especially on an old 3DS (Image from GBATemp thread)
Moving to the Nintendo 3DS scene, two noteworthy homebrew releases have dropped this week despite the console being over 8.5 years old. The first of these is a port of DevilutionX, a Diablo I source port which recently saw its way to hacked PSVita consoles. The 3DS port has been made by GBATemp user MrHuu and currently, it only comes with shareware support if you want a pre-compiled CIA file although you can compile the latest build yourself if you want to play the full game. The developer notes that the port runs slow on original 3DS consoles so for a playable experience, it’s recommended you try it out a New 3DS device as a Reddit user has pointed out that performance is quite poor on the Old 3DS. That being said, there have been various commits to the port’s code on GitHub meaning that development is still going on which might fix bugs and improve performance somewhat, especially on lower-powered 3DS hardware, in the future!
To learn more about DevilutionX for the 3DS,follow this link to its GBATemp Thread and you can download it from its GitHub release page.
Fancy browsing the web on a browser from last decade on your DSi/3DS? Well, now you can with Twilight Menu++
Moving on to the second piece of homebrew, we have an update to TwiLight Menu++ bringing its version number to 11.1.0. This release includes:
- Support for the Nintendo DS Browser by emulating the Memory Expansion Pack via the extra RAM on the DSi/3DS (the DS only has 4MB RAM built-in while the latter have 16MB and 128/256MB)
- With this, you can browse the internet using Presto 1.0, the engine found in Opera 8.5!
- An updated version of GBARunner2
- On the 3DS and DSi, this can be run on CycloDS iEvolution
- Box art can be disabled on the 3DS and DSi by caching it to RAM
- An AP-patch for randomised Pokemon Black was added
- You no longer need to manually turn off heap sink for 6 games including 999 and Sonic Rush
- Some bug fixes
To grab TwiLight Menu++ 11.1.0, follow this link. You may read more about it on its GBATemp thread.
Conclusion
Other than the news above, Valve has released the trailer of Half-Life Alyx, a VR-exclusive title set to be released in March 2020, and one can already pre-order it (with a 10% discount) on Steam.
Like!! I blog quite often and I genuinely thank you for your information. The article has truly peaked my interest.
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What a sad human being you are. Pathetic and sad.
And always pretending to be someone else.
This is impressiv how the people break into that system, i will definitly give me that talk at 36c3 probably over the internet. What also is pretty interessting that the engineering is nearly done but the end of life for the ps4 is also nearly done… So how does it come that most sony hacks can go through but only if the console is near death? just like the easy hacks for the ps3. They were there when ps4 was fully announced.