Piracy-Free console

[WiiUBricker]

I don't know why but lately I thought about how video game consoles can be made piracy-free. Piracy is either enabled by modifications to the DVD drive, through firmware modifications and external memory or when a console uses cartridges by using flash carts.

Flash carts can obviously be ruled out by not using cartridges for games, but optical disc drives. Drive modifications can be ruled out by drives like the new Wii drives, that only support retails discs, even with modchips. And firmware modifications can be ruled out by not adding any external device ports like USB ports or SD slots. Of course that would make a console less appealing (to be honest, nobody would buy them anyway), but it would be nonetheless a good anti-piracy measure. For DLC, save games, settings etc. a big enough flash based memory is sufficient since flash memory doesn't cost a lot these days.

The only issue I see here is perhaps using a wireless network connection to transfer homebrew files to the console and thus allowing piracy by streaming games from the PC to the console. Granted this would require a good enough transfer speed and the console manufactorers can still limit the speed to a point, which makes it impossible for a game to be streamed fast enough for running it properly.

Oh I almost forgot about such USB solutions like WODE, that replaces dvd drives completly. Granted I don't know if developing such devices is possible without even gathering knowledge off hacking and homebrew in the first place.

Thoughts?

 

[ninditsu]

harder to hack. not impossible.

i can see people replacing hardware and stuff like that.

rerouting drives to computers like xbox.

or finding the

i personally do not understand the process to finding exploits, but i can see that this will be very difficult to break.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Or, take after Apple and follow their steps with the iPod Classic, make that thing harder to crack than a brick shit house. Thing has been around for years and nobody has hacked it. Same with BREWos for mobile phones. That has been around for 10 years or so, on a large variety of mobile phones, and afaik nobody has hacked it (at least that is what I read when I was looking into hacking the Samsung Reality, which is still non-hacked).

 

[Rydian]

Jailbreakme.com says hi.

And people can always open their devices to modify files on the storage.

 

[Hop2089]

No such thing and never will be.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Jailbreakme.com says hi.

And people can always open their devices to modify files on the storage.

No, by flash memory I mean an encrypted NAND with encrypted files (like the 3DS NAND).

 

[MarioBrotha]

What about Onlive?

 

[Rydian]

No, by flash memory I mean an encrypted NAND with encrypted files (like the 3DS NAND).

And via tracing you can find plaintext versions being transferred. Hell, even things like truecrypt are susceptible to a cold boot attack.

If people have physical access to the device it's only a matter of time.

 

[WiiUBricker]

No, by flash memory I mean an encrypted NAND with encrypted files (like the 3DS NAND).

And via tracing you can find plaintext versions being transferred. Hell, even things like truecrypt are susceptible to a cold boot attack.

If people have physical access to the device it's only a matter of time.

Ok, lets say the NAND has been decrypted, files modded etc. Still, how would that enable piracy?

 

[cwstjdenobs]

Carts, DVD's, whatever storage are all susceptible to being hacked. TBH I'd say carts are in theory capable of being more secure than optical media.

Thinking about this I'd say if it wasn't for the implementation Nintendo's security design for the Wii was good. The main thing that buggered that up was 1) The laziness in optical disc drive design that made it about as easy to make a mod chip for as the GC, and 2) they should have used encrypted ram the same as the 360.

 

[WiiUBricker]

And yet it has been told that the new Wii drives are unhackable because of nowhere to be found exploits.

 

[cwstjdenobs]

And yet it has been told that the new Wii drives are unhackable because of nowhere to be found exploits.

You never actually hacked the Wii drive, you basically sat between the Wii and the drive and swapped wod read commands for dvd read commands, using mod chips to do it with hardware and cIOS's do it with a custom dvd "driver".

The new drives are "unhackable" because they removed those commands from the drives altogether. Nintendo could get away with it because they never used them.

 

[Rydian]

Ok, lets say the NAND has been decrypted, files modded etc. Still, how would that enable piracy?

Comment out the check for signatures, see what else it looks for and either replicate it in the homebrew or remove the check for it (or have the check always return true). This is simple stuff that happens when cracking PC games all the time.

And from there the steps vary a bit to getting commercial games running depending on if you need to fake the media (virtual device drivers and shit) or not.

 

[prowler]

edit: updated picture

 

[WiiUBricker]

Ok, lets say the NAND has been decrypted, files modded etc. Still, how would that enable piracy?

Comment out the check for signatures, see what else it looks for and either replicate it in the homebrew or remove the check for it (or have the check always return true). This is simple stuff that happens when cracking PC games all the time.

And from there the steps vary a bit to getting commercial games running depending on if you need to fake the media (virtual device drivers and shit) or not.

What does the NAND have anything to do with the drive? The drive either accepts non-retails discs or not, you can't change files in the NAND to add backup disc compatibility, that's why it's impossible to run disc backups on Wii with the new drive, regardless what has been installed in the NAND.

If you think that games could be played by copying them to the NAND, well then lets reduce the size of the nand so that no game would fit.

 

[tbgtbg]

edit: updated picture

Yes, making a system no one wants is pretty much the only real way to make it "piracy" free.

 

[cwstjdenobs]

WiiBricker, you will soon find the only way to make a console 100% secure and free from any type of piracy is to not make them at all.

 

[Slyakin]

Either making the hardware in-accessible at all (like the OnLive console) or just making it impossible to open without rendering the system unplayable.

 

[Ryupower]

just look at the ps3
it was "Piracy-Free console" for a few years,
now
if you have over 3.56+ it a "Piracy-Free console"


Sony has done a good job with the ps3 (for the most part) to keep it a Piracy-Free console

 

[cwstjdenobs]

Either making the hardware in-accessible at all (like the OnLive console) or just making it impossible to open without rendering the system unplayable.

I don't think they could do that legally. What happens when your XBOX720 needs fresh TIM?