Hacking BigBlueBox Says All the Other NSPS Are Wrong

[garyopa]

Has anyone go online with legit unbanned console recently since the big change in CDN system last week, and bought and installed an actual eShop game.

Then modded their Switch, and dump and extracted their nand backup, to see if 'nintendo' infact with legit game bought thru eShop, stores these so called extra worthless metadata (xml's/jpg's) files on your Switch nand.

Maybe the problem is two-fold, not only are the previous dumps 'wrong', but maybe the current nsp installers, are not 'installing and looking' for all the files that the real switch does with legit eshop.

Remember tinfoil and other apps are all based on devmenu and early cdn tools, and devmenu is from early system firmware, it does not mean that even tho everything works fine now without this 'extra metadata', that it is not at least tracked and logged or stored by nintendo themselves at some point during the whole actual legit eShop buy,fetch,install process on the switch.

And you got to remember also, even if the above is 'useless' right now, does not mean in future like with v6.0 firmware when 'paid online' launches in 3 to 4 weeks, that these 'files' are now 'needed' and 'logged' and 'looked for'.

 

[Dust2dust]

Proper nsp releases are one thing (as useless as this metadata may seem right now), but if BBB doesn't also include the game updates and DLCs when applicable, we might as well grab everything through CDNSP to get the whole package. I didn't download anything yet, so I don't know if they thought of that or not. Will have to check with a small game first, like pic-a-pix. Also, kind of disappointed that BBB uses the same titlekeys as we already have access. So still no NEO.GEO Magical Drop III.

 

[jakkal]

Proper nsp releases are one thing (as useless as this metadata may seem right now), but if BBB doesn't also include the game updates and DLCs when applicable, we might as well grab everything through CDNSP to get the whole package. I didn't download anything yet, so I don't know if they thought of that or not. Will have to check with a small game first, like pic-a-pix. Also, kind of disappointed that BBB uses the same titlekeys as we already have access. So still no NEO.GEO Magical Drop III.

the title keys never changes. each game has only 1 title key

 

[Dust2dust]

the title keys never changes. each game has only 1 title key

What I mean is BBB released the same games we already have access to with CDNSP. (I didn't check every single title, though, but it sure looks like it). I would have expected them to release new stuff too, being a scene group.

 

[jakkal]

What I mean is BBB released the same games we already have access to with CDNSP. (I didn't check every single title, though, but it sure looks like it). I would have expected them to release new stuff too, being a scene group.

all games downloaded from Nintendo servers will have the same title id and title keys

 

[smf]

Actually, most people download backups for piracy and to play them. You know, not everyone owns a video game museum, and other people "preserve" these games anyway. For the end users, those extra files don't matter.

You were doing ok until the end. Most people don't care, not everyone is into preservation.

But some end users do care, why are you so grouchy about that?

 

[BlastedGuy9905]

You were doing ok until the end. Most people don't care, not everyone is into preservation.

But some end users do care, why are you so grouchy about that?

I'm sorry, yes, I should've said that for MOST end users those files don't matter. I'm going to edit my post.

 

[Tomy Sakazaki]

Answer to OP: BBB is right. Most NSP dumps will work. But BBB being a "scene" group they want to have the "most complete and accurate dumps". And with this they are meaning "everything that is the same when you source from 2 different consoles/carts" with that, excluding certificates and ID's that may be unique in every copy and that can tie to an individual user.
That's why scene releases may include lots of data that are useless to most end users, including dummy space on XCI dumps, but they don't include valid keys or certificates.
In the end, you want to help preserve games, share the scene releases. You want only to play the games, download whatever works.

 

[JupiterJesus]

I've written my own CDN downloader + switch nsp library manager (not released publicly) so I've been staring at this stuff for a while. I looked at the pic someone posted of the files extracted from the BBB release and here's what my thoughts are.

Every switch title is composed of a bunch of NCA files, plus the cert and tik. Furthermore, one of those NCAs is always a CNMT, which contains metadata about the rest of the NCAs (hashes, nca type, nca ID, etc). That CNMT is absolutely necessary, as are the NCAs themselves.

The jpegs are title icons, and those icons are actually contained WITHIN one of the other NCAs, what is termed the "Control NCA". There's no need to extract those jpgs and put them in the NSP, because they are already inside of the control NCA. Otherwise, you would install your NSP and your game would have no icon. That is in fact where I (and CDNSP) get the icons displayed in the app - download the cnmt, get the ID of the Control NCA, download and decrypt the control NCA and snatch the American icon from it.

The cnmt xml is included in both, but this file is GENERATED by CDNSP and my app. It isn't downloaded from anywhere (maybe it could be? I dunno). The CNMT xml is the only one necessary, I believe, so we only bother to generate it. I see no reason that other XMLs couldn't be generated for other NCA files. For example, there is an NCA usually included of the type LegalInformation. The xml file ending in legalinfo.xml is probably just an XML file generated using data that came from that NCA. I suspect that if I got a copy of the legalinfo.xml, I could reproduce it using data from within the NCA and add it to the NSP as well.

I have no idea what the NACP.xml file is, nor the programinfo.xml, though perhaps that one is generated using the Program type NCA. I can't be sure if these are new data or if they are just generated from NCA data like the CNMT xml is.

Anyway, my overall point is that all of those extra files contain data that is already present inside of the other files in your NSP. If I learned what those files looked like and where they read their data from, my took (and CDNSP, if its author did the same) could easily generate them all. The jpg files would be especially easy.

So I guess the question is then if the current NSPs are actually wrong if they do in fact contain 100% of the data that describes the title. Maybe still wrong, but not as wrong as it seems on the face of it I guess. For the sake of preservation, all that would actually matter is that all data exists OR can be accurately reconstructed from existing data, right?

Let me repeat that without actually reading the contents of the XML files and doing some research on switchbrew, I can't be 100% sure about this. These are just my thoughts based on seeing the posted screenshot. I'm now curious enough about this that I'll probably get my hands on a BBB release just to see what those files look like and perhaps modify my NSP repacking code.

 

[smf]

But BBB being a "scene" group they want to have the "most complete and accurate dumps".

Some scene groups care, others don't. That has always been the case.

The PS3 scene was a clusterfuck. Now redump are doing encrypted ps3 iso.

 

[Tomy Sakazaki]

Some scene groups care, others don't. That has always been the case.

The PS3 scene was a clusterfuck.

Ok, game preservation scenes then.
The piracy scene actually only cares about cracking and playing games, maybe that's what happened with most scenes. (Well, games with added intros didn't help in preservation and we had lot of theses when emulators for 16bit system got popular).

 

[crissal]

I've written my own CDN downloader + switch nsp library manager (not released publicly) so I've been staring at this stuff for a while. I looked at the pic someone posted of the files extracted from the BBB release and here's what my thoughts are.

Every switch title is composed of a bunch of NCA files, plus the cert and tik. Furthermore, one of those NCAs is always a CNMT, which contains metadata about the rest of the NCAs (hashes, nca type, nca ID, etc). That CNMT is absolutely necessary, as are the NCAs themselves.

The jpegs are title icons, and those icons are actually contained WITHIN one of the other NCAs, what is termed the "Control NCA". There's no need to extract those jpgs and put them in the NSP, because they are already inside of the control NCA. Otherwise, you would install your NSP and your game would have no icon. That is in fact where I (and CDNSP) get the icons displayed in the app - download the cnmt, get the ID of the Control NCA, download and decrypt the control NCA and snatch the American icon from it.

The cnmt xml is included in both, but this file is GENERATED by CDNSP and my app. It isn't downloaded from anywhere (maybe it could be? I dunno). The CNMT xml is the only one necessary, I believe, so we only bother to generate it. I see no reason that other XMLs couldn't be generated for other NCA files. For example, there is an NCA usually included of the type LegalInformation. The xml file ending in legalinfo.xml is probably just an XML file generated using data that came from that NCA. I suspect that if I got a copy of the legalinfo.xml, I could reproduce it using data from within the NCA and add it to the NSP as well.

I have no idea what the NACP.xml file is, nor the programinfo.xml, though perhaps that one is generated using the Program type NCA. I can't be sure if these are new data or if they are just generated from NCA data like the CNMT xml is.

Anyway, my overall point is that all of those extra files contain data that is already present inside of the other files in your NSP. If I learned what those files looked like and where they read their data from, my took (and CDNSP, if its author did the same) could easily generate them all. The jpg files would be especially easy.

So I guess the question is then if the current NSPs are actually wrong if they do in fact contain 100% of the data that describes the title. Maybe still wrong, but not as wrong as it seems on the face of it I guess. For the sake of preservation, all that would actually matter is that all data exists OR can be accurately reconstructed from existing data, right?

Let me repeat that without actually reading the contents of the XML files and doing some research on switchbrew, I can't be 100% sure about this. These are just my thoughts based on seeing the posted screenshot. I'm now curious enough about this that I'll probably get my hands on a BBB release just to see what those files look like and perhaps modify my NSP repacking code.

This was the best answer so far.
BTW I think these files exists like an overlayed security, maybe the system first "extract" the jpgs and xmls from the NCA it has, and then compare the now-created metadatas with the existing ones with MD5 or SHA.
Obviously this is a theory, but if you can manage to extract these files from the NCA, it would be interesting to see if it's correct.

 

[caitsith2]

Updates missing deltas seems to happen with even SD to NSP, because said deltas were not downloaded officially either. My tool as a result will ignore the fact that deltas are missing and proceed anyways. It is possible that only in certain cases are the deltas actually downloaded, and any other attempt is a potential flag for nintendo to recognize unauthorized access of the CDN, which could potentially lead to the switch cert being banned from CDN downloading of any kind.

 

[JupiterJesus]

I just did some more poking and found that the CONTROL NCA contains not only the icon, but also a file called control.nacp. I don't know what that is, but it is probably the source of the nacp.xml file inside of the BBB release. Here is the switchbrew link for it http://switchbrew.org/index.php?title=Control.nacp. It is mostly filled with 0s and only contains some simple metadata like language, title id, version, etc.

 

[RayPanimals]

BBB dumps 4 Life

 

[huma_dawii]

MAYBE just MAYBE "sick" NSP are the reason for the NSP Ban Wave? I got banned right after I installed an NSP so it could be.

 

[alkar]

No they are not. The XML and the PNG are not even installed by DevMenu or downloaded from CDN from a regular Switch + legit game.

They are just decorating the NSP.

 

[Dust2dust]

MAYBE just MAYBE "sick" NSP are the reason for the NSP Ban Wave? I got banned right after I installed an NSP so it could be.

Then that would be an easy test to perform. Someone who is not banned and has never installed a NSP before can just install one of BBB's NSP propers, and try to go online. My guess is he will be banned anyway. It's so easy for Nintendo to figure out something is fishy when you have a game installed that you never bought on the eShop.

 

[Absintu]

Then that would be an easy test to perform. Someone who is not banned and has never installed a NSP before can just install one of BBB's NSP propers, and try to go online. My guess is he will be banned anyway. It's so easy for Nintendo to figure out something is fishy when you have a game installed that you never bought on the eShop.

i would like this test too. Still not banned, bt im staying away from nsp. Only xci

 

[huma_dawii]

i would like this test too. Still not banned, bt im staying away from nsp. Only xci

XCI offline is the way to go... NSP too dangerous xD