Wii Uses Elliptic Curve Cryptography For Saves

An anonymous reader writes "A user at the Nintendo-Scene forums just posted a lengthy post about his discovery that the Wii savegame files are signed and encrypted with NIST B 233 bit elliptic curve cryptography. Could this be the first step for a Wii softmod the homebrew community have waited for? From the post: 'It appears a Wii savegame file ends with a certificate chain. The certificates contains a public keypair (the one that is being "certified") and a signature (another number pair) from the signing entity. The number pairs are stored as a compound 60 bit data (first 30 bytes for the first number, and the next 30 bytes for the second). Hence, the first and middle byte is always 00 or 01 for keys, and 00 for signatures. One can check that the keys are indeed NIST B 233 keys using openssls EC_KEY_check_key function (code forthcoming).'"

Elliptic Curve?

[underpenguin]

Well, I'll just dig out my uplink disk....I think I have an elliptic code breaker in there somewhere

Re:WTF?

[__aaclcg7560]

Without encrypted gamesaves, the global economy will collapse and basement gamers will be out on the streets panhandling for money.

Re:More important than homebrew potential

[farkus888]

no its not, why the fuck haven't you bought the fourth nunchuck yet?

what will we do with out it!

[kaizokuace]

What will all the hacker and code breaker types do with their time if all companies stop encrypting stuff?

Re:WTF?

[adamofgreyskull]

And you thought homeless people smelt bad now?

Some save mods arguably aren't cheating

[tepples]

I don't really see a good argument for anyone to modify saved games. There is zero benefit to the end user

False. I want to move a "zipper shirt" from my character in Animal Crossing for Nintendo GameCube to my character in Animal Crossing: Wild World for Nintendo DS. From GameCube to GameCube, I can use the "Hear code" and "Say code" inside Tom Nook's store to move the item. From DS to DS, I can use the online features. But unfortunately, the "Hear Code" functionality was cut from the DS version, so I have to write a program that hacks the DS version's saved game to insert the item into the player's inventory.

Re:WTF?

[harlows_monkeys]

Because if someone steals from your bank account, that is a crime, and there is a mechanism to punish them.

If, however, someone cheats with a gamesave, there is no official mechanism to deal with them, and so people would have to turn to vigilante justice to track down and deal with cheaters. That would be bad. Very bad. First, it would start out with roving gangs of gamers, seeking out and punishing the transgressors. Some might see them as heroes, but it would not last. Disagreements would arise over what is cheating, and what is acceptable modding.

This would finally lead to civil war, as the gaming world splits into two (or more!) factions fighting it out. As the gaming world goes, so goes civilization itself, and the new dark ages would be upon us.

Until the government gets off its ass and outlaws fiddling with gamesaves, all we have standing between us and the apocalypse are the game companies, and their gamesave cryptography.