marcan

Last year, we demonstrated Linux running on the PS4 in a lightning talk - presented on the PS4 itself. But how did we do it? In a departure from previous Console Hacking talks focusing on security, this year we're going to focus on the PS4 hardware, what makes it different from a PC, and how we reverse engineered it enough to get a full-blown Linux distro running on it, complete with 3D acceleration.

So you have an exploit. You have code execution. Great! But what do you do now? In the past, console homebrew usually focused on bringing up a development environment similar to the one used for commercial games. However, with the increasing complexity of console hardware, it's becoming impractical for a small team of hackers to create a full blown development SDK. Using leaked official SDKs is illegal. What can we do? Well, there's Linux. The PS4 is particularly great for Linux, because it is based on a modified x86 platform and a modified Radeon GPU. That means that once the basic OS port is complete, it can run existing games - even Steam games and other commercial software. But just how similar is the PS4 to a PC? Can you just throw GRUB on it and boot an Ubuntu kernel? Not quite. In this talk we'll cover the PS4 hardware and part of its software environment, and how we reverse engineered enough of it to write Linux drivers and kernel patches. We'll go over how we went from basic code execution to building a 'kexec' function that can boot into Linux from the PS4's FreeBSD-based kernel. We'll reverse engineer the PS4's special hardware, from special PCI interrupt management to the HDMI encoder. We'll dive deep into the Radeon-based GPU architecture, and we'll share some previously unreleased research and tools of interest to AMD Radeon driver developers and hackers. If you're interested in the strange world of x86 hardware that isn't quite a PC, then this talk is for you.

About a year ago Nintendo released their latest video gaming console, the Wii U. Since 2006, the Wii has led to one of the most active homebrew scenes after its security system was completely bypassed. This talk will discuss the improvements made in Wii U's architecture and explain how it was broken in less than 31 days. The talk is targeted at those who hack (or design) embedded system security, but gamers might also find it interesting.

The talk will consist of several parts. First, we will discuss the Wii U: what it is, what makes it tick, and how it compares to its predecessor, the Wii. Next, we will cover two different approaches that we used to attack the Wii U system. The focus will be on how our results were achieved instead of on what those results are, so you can reproduce the attacks at home. Along the way we'll describe the Wii U's security architecture. The third and final part of the talk will cover where to go from here: What is broken, what is yet to be broken, things that still have to be done to create a viable homebrew ecosystem, the balance between the effort required and the reward for users and hackers, and the potential upsides and downsides of different approaches. Basic knowledge of embedded systems and CPU architectures is recommended for attendees, although we will try to explain required concepts as we go along. Before and after the talk we will also be available in the hackcenter for those who would like to discuss further details or embedded security in general.

Other people: sven Nicholas Allegra (comex)