News spread recently about an upcoming “savedata editor” for the PS4. The product (Cyber SaveData PS4), announced for release next month by a Japanese console modding company, claims users will be able to edit their PS4 save games from their computer, then copy it back to their PS4.

Editing savegames is as old as gaming: people use it to reach 100% completion, get more gold, unlock secret levels, and more. In the old PSP days, savegames were used by hackers (including myself) to activate usermode exploits on the console. This was fairly easy to do in days where the save data was either not encrypted, or, like was the case on the PSP, encrypted with a common key.

But savedata modification has become complex with time. In particular, on modern consoles, save game data is encrypted specifically for each user. In other words, you cannot (in theory) share your savegames with Friends, and you cannot modify or alter your save data  in any way.

What this upcoming release implies is that the people behind Cyber SaveData have found a way to decrypt and reencrypt PS4 Savegames.

A quick overview of how the product will work, on the official page

The requirements or their piece of software is to have an internet connection and a valid PSN Id. Although nothing has been really disclosed on Cyber SaveData PS4, it sounds possible that they use hacked PS4s server side (potentially consoles running firmware 1.76?) to decrypt and reencrypt the data.

In any case, it sounds very unlikely that the software running on your PC will contain any of the encryption/decryption logic. Hence the requirement for an internet connection. It will be up to you to decide if you are ok with sharing your PSN Id (and maybe more) with a random software company, and if you are willing to run the risk of a potential PSN ban if playing online with non kosher save data.

There’s also probably no way the technique gets reverse-engineered since it is hosted server side. People who have been playing with 1.76 exploits or more however, might already know about how this is done, and could potentially share the technique, which could bypass the need to buy Cyber SaveData.

Cyber SaveData for PS4 will cost 7800 yen in Japan, or approximately $70. There’s a discount for a “3 licenses” at 14,800 Yen ($130). That’s a lot of money just to be able to cheat in games. Of course, that’s until savegame data proves to be a valid entry point for usermode exploits, at which point everyone will probably rush to get their hands on a license of the product.

Additionally, the promotional page of the product gives examples on things that can be achieved with the Cyber SaveData software, such as 99999999 gold in FFXV, 9999999 Experience in Persona 5, 999999 gems in Gravity Rush 2, and more.

Hackinformer say this will be limited to Japanese accounts for now, but I don’t see any such claim on the page. Sure, you’ll need to be able to buy the product (which probably will only be sold in Japan for now), but besides that there doesn’t seem to be any claim on the product only working in Japan. It is possible, however, that early iterations will only work on JP PSN accounts, but I don’t see any technical limitation that would prevent the company to extend this to other servers if needed.

Source: cybergadget, via Reddit