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:

[__aaclcg7560]

I think I still have an elliptic code breaker written in logo from my Apple ][ days. :P

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that we live in a world where our console gamesaves are protected more aggressively than our bank accounts and our identities combined?

Re:WTF?

[__aaclcg7560]

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

Re:

[adamofgreyskull]

And you thought homeless people smelt bad now?

Re:WTF?

[Yvanhoe]

Or our votes....

solution to the 'votes' problem

[roman_mir]

Make voting into a video game, outsource development to Nintendo Wii, watch Nintendo become company non-grata in most 'democratic' states of the world.

Re:

[noidentity]

The governments of the world don't need easy access to your game saves, apparently.

Re:

[suv4x4]

Why is it that we live in a world where our console gamesaves are protected more aggressively than our bank accounts and our identities combined?

Reason 1:

Because the manufacturer of a hardware/software product has more expertize in data protection and encryption than a bank owner does.

Reason 2:

In the first case, the vendor tries to protect itself and his assets. The incentive is strong.
In the second case, the vendor is supposed to protect their customers. The incentive is weaker.

---------

That said, I want t

Re:

[sqldr]

Reason 3:

If the game save is encrypted, then the computer can check it's not been tampered with, and thus protect itself from buffer overflows in the data. Most of the copyright cracks on PS2 and Xbox were carried out by loading up bogus saved games.

They're protecting themselves.

You may not like the answer, but...

[Xenographic]

Clearly, the people who make our video games are far more competent than those protecting those other things like votes, money, identity, etc.

Actually, it makes a sort of perverse sense. It's pretty easy to write bog-standard business applications that do CRUD (in both the database & other sense), but it's not so easy to program a game that has to run at acceptable frame rates.

Yet it may be evidence of a clue...

[Xenographic]

> Actually, its not so hard either. Neither is elliptical curve encryption. Don't overestimate the difficulty of these things. They might have been hard 15 years ago, but today such things are well documented and a plethora of libraries are available to make it even easier.

Using ECC, you're right, isn't that hard. Using ECC correctly is harder, but not that hard.

Mostly, it's rare. That's the part that gets me.

Given that I haven't seen too many using ECC, even though it has some cool properties like not

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.

Re:

[vmfedor]

That sounds like it would be a great MMO!

Re:

[britneys 9th husband]

If a gamesave is not protected, a multinational corporation might fall one cent short on its earnings next quarter. If a bank account or identity is not protected, a person might spend the rest of their life trying to set things straight while their ability to get credit, rent an apartment, get a job, get health insurance, or buy a home is destroyed.

Clearly, our society has spoken as to which of these things is more important to prevent.

It seems to me...

[PipianJ]

That this likely means the exact opposite. Elliptic Curve Cryptography [wikipedia.org] is relatively difficult to crack (not unlike RSA). More to the point, it's also not liable to factorization attacks like RSA is. Furthermore, the best crack of elliptic curve technology is of a 109-bit key, and still took 3,600 [certicom.com] or 15,000 [certicom.com] computer-years (whether it's a binary or prime field case, respectively).

Nintendo's not stupid. They've used RSA encryption to keep the average hacker out of DS-wireless homebrew, and this is most likely a mandated response to the Splinter Cell hack that allowed soft modding on the Xbox. It won't stop hacking through security holes in the internet protocols (a-la PSO+BBA), but they're certainly making efforts to prevent corrupted data from opening up softmod paths.

Re:It seems to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what you're getting at when you say ECC isn't liable to factorization attacks. Its certainly more difficult to compute discrete logs in an elliptic curve group than it is to factor an RSA modulus. That's why it takes a 2048 bit RSA key to have roughly the same security strength as a 233 bit ECC key.

But, particularly because of the recent confusion regarding ECC's resistance to quantum computing (that is, that it has none), I want to make sure people realize ECC isn't any stronger than RSA. Sure, you get shorter keys and faster computations with ECC versus RSA, but for all practical purposes if/when RSA falls, ECC will go down with it. Factorization algorithms usually lead to discrete log algorithms, and vice versa. That's certainly the case with Shor's algorithm, which probably should have been made clear when the quantum computing article was posted.

Re:

[numatrix]

This is an important point. I'm no really sure what the GP means. In fact, long ago when I actually understood a very tiny bit about how these things worked I asked a similar question on sci.crypt and got the following responses:

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.crypt/browse_thread/thread/d096e5e93192f176/6e0e62f174f8a9e3 [google.com]

Re:

[Watson Ladd]

Discreet log algorithms are different depending on the group they are in. Braid group algorithms, for example, are almost polynomial time, while in $\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}$ the best known algorithms are exponential in complexity.

Re:

[tpwch]

Yes, but they don't have to break it, they just have to find the public key. It must be stored somewhere on the wii, so it can do the encryption of the saves. They were able to find the keys for blu-ray and hd-dvd, so why not here?

While it is not liable to factorization attacks

[S3D]

It is still liable to disassembly attack. If elliptic curve used is sect233r1, as poster assume, that could be useful information for disassembly. If wii use OpenSSL that fact could be even more useful.

PSO's security hole was an anti-cheating back door

[Myria]

I found the PSO exploit when I was cheating the Dreamcast version of the game. PSO "version 2" added a new packet, known as RcvProgramPatch, that downloaded code to the system. Sega used that packet to download assembly code to the client that checked for some of the cheats we made. The packet stayed in the game through the GameCube version, at which point someone else found it and made the BBA homebrew exploit.

Of course, Sega didn't sign that downloaded code, which is why it worked.

Regarding this savega

Great, now about the next step.

[Neuticle]

(Assuming that this discovery allows people to write new, arbitrary yet signed data into a save file on a SD card that the Wii will recognize as a "valid" save)

The next step will be to search for an exploit in the console or in a game that allows execution of that data. The final step is to figure out how to get that newly loaded code to do something useful. I know this has been done before, but I'm under the impression that the exploit (in a 007 game) was found by chance. After that lucky break, the code-something-useful part came very fast.

Is there any way to search for such an exploit other than brute force testing of games? Are there things to look for that normal players might see, or do you have to just try to execute code over and over and over in various situations, hoping to find a hole? In short, how can I, a non-programmer, help?

I have hundreds of SNES and NES carts. I would love to be able to run those games on the Wii without having to buy them a second time or wait for N to trickle them out. Now if I can just hack together some Wii wireless SNES and NES pads, I'll be in heaven.

PS

[Neuticle]

I know I made a big assumption* in the parent post, but I wanted to ask the question about the second step, if we ever get there.

It's just too bad that there isn't some way to compromise to allow a Wii "sandbox" to play around and develop in without allowing full fledged piracy. Maybe a modified (i.e. slightly crippled to prevent full piracy) Wii dev-kit open to all for a reasonable cost?

Just throwing the idea out there

*I know getting past the encryption will be no easy task, and may not be feasible at all

Re:

[tepples]

It's just too bad that there isn't some way to compromise to allow a Wii "sandbox" to play around and develop in without allowing full fledged piracy.

It's called a PC with a Bluetooth adapter.

Re:

[tepples]

Console programming can get fairly low level and having the experience of working with the hardware as opposed to APIs can be a good experience for those who want it. Look at devkitARM for instance.

And devkitPPC. Buy a GameCube, a boot disc, and an SD card; then you can experiment in an environment quite similar to that of the Wii. I was just confused as to whether Neuticle wanted to develop for the Wii for the sake of developing for a console, or whether (s)he wanted to develop for a system that uses its controller. Both a PC + Wii Remote and a GameCube + boot disc qualify as Neuticle's "modified (i.e. slightly crippled to prevent full piracy) Wii dev-kit", but in different ways.

Re:

[Neuticle]

Like I said, I'm not a programmer, but I do enjoy playing around with homebrew stuff.

As for the Gamecube, you wouldn't have the Wii remote at all (unless there is some interface I'm not aware of). That pretty much kills it if you want to play around with Wii remotes.

For the PC: has the sensor bar been successfully interfaced? If not then the interface is still broken. Even then, you could have a lot of fun messing around with a Wii remote and Bluetooth PC. But you're tied to a PC, and it's my understanding

Tied to a PC, or tied to a GameCube

[tepples]

For the PC: has the sensor bar been successfully interfaced?

The sensor bar is two banks of infrared LEDs. Its "interface" is just whether a voltage is applied over the contacts or not.

But you're tied to a PC, and it's my understanding that NOT being on a PC is the attraction to homebrew for some people.

And if I code for a GameCube, I'm tied to a GameCube. That's why I develop homebrew for the DS, so that I'm not tied to anything.

Re:

[Bert64]

I have a compilation DVD that runs on a modded gamecube or wii, it includes an emulator and a whole heap of NES/SNES (and sega consoles) rom files... I believe there's an xbox version of this DVD too. You could use that, and if you really feel bad about piracy just play the games where you also posess the physical cart.

Re:

[gl4ss]

a new mod is needed for the new wii consoles that are in shops now, as they use a newer version of the drive chip that is what was the attack route before with wii modchips(no chip works on gc2-d2c chip, as apparently the legs are not connected inside the chip, so the currently thought of workaround is afaik to replace the entire chip, which takes a little more of soldering experience than normal modding).

with older wii's you can use very cheap modchips(wiikey clones are under ten bucks a piece)..

so a softm

Re:

[Donniedarkness]

Regarding the part about the wireless SNES controller:

Have you seen Nintendo's "Classic controller" that they offer (primarily for the virtual console games)? It looks a little odd, but after you start using it, you'll realize that it's really an SNES controller with some analog sticks thrown on at the bottom (and two extra "shoulder" buttons). Also, it plugs into the wii-remote, so I consider it semi-wireless.

Anyways, definately my favourite controller ever, so you should give it a try, if you haven't ye

Re:

[Neuticle]

I've tried it, and it's pretty darn good, but I like my classic games on the period controllers they were designed for. I've maintained a stable of NES, SNES, Genesis and 64 controllers, and repaired more than a few rather than buy some 3rd party replacement. Anything broken beyond easy fix would be a perfect fit to turn into a Bluetooth wireless.

As an extra bonus, they could also be used on a PC with emulators (if I'm remembering correctly)

I know the NES, SNES and Genesis controllers were done, but do you

Re:

[JonXP]

Oh please no, "clicky" analog sticks are one of the worst human interface designs ever... It's so easy to hit them by accident, or even worse, never realize they're even there.

Re:

[Neuticle]

Amen.

In my experience, you have to return the joystick close to center to click reliably, which is asinine, and the tactile response is poor and uneven.

What makes it worse is the way they are implemented. I hate it when a game requires a click in a context where you are already using the joystick for aiming or movement (Like zooming in). The only worse sin is when a click makes you do something you really don't want to do, like lie down.
I've curse over that one a few times.

I would have added buttons on the

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?

It's just like Demolition Man...

[Tim Browse]

...where the police are looking for a violent killer, and then their surveillance locates him, and they all breathe a sigh of relief, as they assume that's the hard part done - all they have to do now is arrest him.

I can't help thinking that there's a wee bit more work to do than just find out what encryption method is being used.

Then again, maybe your average slashdotter thinks that 'breaking encryption' is as easy as 'guessing the algorithm used' :-).

Re:

[Poromenos1]

I don't know about the average slashdotter, but this editor probably seems to be "oh, it's just encryption; I'll reverse it and be home for lunch" school of thought.

Re:

[forkazoo]

...where the police are looking for a violent killer, and then their surveillance locates him, and they all breathe a sigh of relief, as they assume that's the hard part done - all they have to do now is arrest him.

I can't help thinking that there's a wee bit more work to do than just find out what encryption method is being used.

Then again, maybe your average slashdotter thinks that 'breaking encryption' is as easy as 'guessing the algorithm used' :-).

Well, sure, it'll be none trivial to get a key. OTOH,

Re:It's just like Demolition Man...

[Tim Browse]

. OTOH, there are a lot of Wii owners with an interest in finding it, so it might not be infeasible to imagine a distributed computing project with many thousands of nodes cranking away for a year.

I don't want to worry you, but there's a possibility that cryptographers have thought of that.

For example: [purselipsquarejaw.org]

the Xbox uses a 2048-bit encryption key - and that will be really hard to crack, even if it is theoretically possible to derive the private key from the public key. Via New Scientist: "Brian Gladman, an independent cryptography expert based in the UK, says the length of the key means there is an incredibly slim chance of finding it via brute force computing. According to RSA company, it would take a million Pentium 500MHz computers 100 billion years to run through all the possible solutions of a 1640-bit key. A 2048 bit key would be exponentially harder to crack.

Re:

[Eivind]

True, if the encryption/signing is implemented correctly, there's little hope that it'll be cracked anytime soon.

But there's another avenue for attack. Given that a wii-game is capable of creating, verifying and signing its own savefiles, this means that the encryption-keys are also stored either in the wii-console or in the game-software.

So, it's just a matter of extracting them.

Once you know *both* the method of encryption and signing, *AND* are in posession of the relevant keys, the rest really is a walk

Something here is not right...

[Danga]

FTFS
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).

Interesting that they can store 60 bytes of data in 60 bits! I think someone made a typo...

Obligatory quote

[Yvan256]

"Enough of your borax, poindexter! We need action!" - Chief Wiggum

bits or bytes

[cerelib]

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)

That math does not seem to work out.
60 b = 30 B + 30 B (huh?)

So which is it, bits or bytes? Oh well, I guess I will go read the article to find out.

Re:

[strstrep]

I'm guessing bytes. A 30-bit keyspace is pretty small, definitely within the realm of brute forcing.

Re:

[rbarreira]

30 bits is ridiculous even for ECC. A 109 bit key has been cracked already, with the use of distributed computing.

Re:

[Eddi3]

Not criminals. Cheaters. They're keeping gameplay fair.

Re:

[jandrese]

Yeah, I don't know how many times my Wii online play has been ruined by cheaters thus far...

Crypto as cheat-prevention

[Saint Fnordius]

I was thinking along the same lines, that the crypto was less about preventing homebrews (though Nintendo probably does want to keep homebrews down), and more about preventing players from hacking into their savegames and "improving" their saved position. But seeing as I don't do much online gaming, I didn't see the point. Now I do.

Now normally I would have nothing against "cheating" in this form: it is more like cheating at solitaire or using house rules an a dinner-table game. But when you are playing wit

Re:More important than homebrew potential

[farkus888]

it would seem this way on the surface. but the potential for online games on the wii[see mario strikers charged or big brain academy wii degree for early efforts] means cheats for extra gold coins or whatever could have a negative affect on me. personally I am not interested in hacking my saves and would like to know people I am playing against online are not cheating, so this is something I would request. in my mind as a regular player [I own a wii console four full controllers 2 classic controllers and about 13 games, that makes me a big buyer for them compared to most] I feel that they have done me a service by trying to keep online gaming fair and I've not had anything I wanted to do on my wii hindered by this. just something to keep in mind.

for reference I am a linux user and took time out of writing a shell script for a solaris machine at work to write this response. normally your mentality is how I think but this time it doesn't stand up to a little critical thinking from the perspective of a fairly heavily vested party. [I don't know anyone who has spent more towards wii, games, and controllers than I have. though I am sure some /.er will outrank me here]

Re:

[Drantin]

What? Having a Japanese and American Wii, 4 controllers, 3 nunchucks, 3 classic controllers and 15 games isn't normal?

Re:More important than homebrew potential

[farkus888]

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

Re:

[Bert64]

Modding save games has very little to do with online play... Typically for an online game, your "save game" will be stored on the server so you can't edit it anyway.
Editing single player save games would have no effect on online play...
To prevent cheating with online games, you want to prevent modification of the game data itself, and modification of the network traffic. However this all gives a false sense of security, because people will still always find a way to cheat.

Re:

[LordVader717]

Only for Online-only play. Say a player collects rewards while playing offline, and the developers want to enable him to take them online.
One example that springs to mind is the online Pokémon trading in Pearl/Diamond, where many Pokémon are cheated, which kind of kills the point of it all.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

Diablo II had this kind of ability; you could use characters online and offline. As I recall, there was also a mode where you could only use a character online but I never used it. Unlike the Wii, this was important since it supported LAN play as well as Internet play, so a group of friends could get together and solve some of the quests together. Since the game was mainly cooperative, rather than competitive, it didn't affect the play for other people much.

If the only two options are offline and Inte

Re:

[TheRaven64]

Um... I'm afraid that Diablo II has no such feature. You can have eight characters on your computer and eight on the server, and they cannot mix.

Interesting. I frequently used the same characters in LAN games as in single player mode. I just fired up the game on a couple of machines, and it still seems to work. The only down side is that you lose the mapping information in any areas you visit. The map is dynamically generated on the server each time the game is launched, and so if you take a single player character in to a network game their map is reset.

Re:

[Burpmaster]

It DOES have this feature. How could you miss it?

They have both 'open' and 'closed' servers [diabloii.net]. The 'open' servers accept characters stored on your computer, and have no protection from hacked saves, but they are good for playing with friends who you know aren't cheating.

On 'closed' servers, your characters are created on their server and can only be played online.

Re:

[PitaBred]

Yeah, you're right. Game developers will never win as long as there are douchebags like you who want to ruin the fun of the game for everyone who isn't cheating.

Mod parent troll

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

Yet another case of a company treating customers like criminals.

What? Are you an idiot? How in hell does this treat customers like criminals?

Perhaps you don't understand why most /.ers think the RIAA treat their customers like criminals. The RIAA use DRM to restrict users such that their Fair Use rights are impeded. Further, they explain their actions away by claiming to thwart piracy. Further, they sue their customers with no initial proof that the defendant did anything illegal, and instead abuse the courts and demand to invade their property in order to then determine any wrongdoing. And further, they do all this solely for their own profit and not for the profit of the licensed musicians.

Nintendo does none of this. They encrypt savefiles. So what? This does not impede on your right to do anything. You can play any given game on as many Wiis as you wish. Nintendo is also not suing people to force hackers to halt breaking their savefile encryption. Game developers generally don't want players artificially advancing within games. Perhaps there are statistics stored within the savefile used online. Whatever's in the savefile is up to the game devs, and Nintendo is simply hiding that.

In other words, Nintendo is completely within their rights to encrypt savefiles. In turn, AFAIK, you are completely within your rights to attempt to break that encryption. And in turn again, Nintendo is completely within their rights to push out any updates to change or otherwise enforce their encryption. It's really that simple.

Re:

[WarwickRyan]

He's wrong, not a troll. Unfortunately you can't mod posts 'wrong'.

Re:

[iamacat]

Nintendo does none of this. They encrypt savefiles. So what? This does not impede on your right to do anything. You can play any given game on as many Wiis as you wish. Nintendo is also not suing people to force hackers to halt breaking their savefile encryption. Game developers generally don't want players artificially advancing within games.

You are from a generation that forgot about actual property rights, despite extensive brainwashing about intellectual property. The game console, the game disk and the

Re:

[blahplusplus]

"This does not impede on your right to do anything."

Actually it does. The Wii allows removable flash memory storage for save games so you could technically edit save files on your PC with tools made by others to give you an advantage in single player games, plus lots of people just like to screw around and see what crazy kinds of things the can get the game to do.

Witness Warhog jumping is an example of us screwing around -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kg52_2XVtI [youtube.com]

And since technically as a consumer the

Re:

[farkus888]

I think they absolutely love us. the kind of money they are making on those of us who play their games is more than enough to get us past the "no kissing on the lips" rule. I am by no means a nintendo fanboy, I haven't even played video games consistently for almost 7 years. I am speaking their praises because they built a system that is cool enough to play to get me back in to gaming. I know there are some crazy nintendo is always right people but don't discredit everyone who sings the wii's praises. and y

Re:

[LordVader717]

Wrong. The DMCA and co. are about copy-prevention systems, and this is not the case. And I would be very sceptical whether a developer has any copyrights to a save file at all.

Re:More important than homebrew potential

[Josef Meixner]

No, I think there is a much more mundane reason. In the past some of the consoles were broken with manipulated save games, the games didn't properly check the data and so opened a hole. I would guess Nintendo didn't want to take that chance and so added an API which sits between the game and the saved data. As the saved data could be verified for being originally written by the game before the game would even get a chance to have a look at it, it means it is much harder to attack code not written by Nintendo to be exploited.

Disclaimer: I have never seen the API of a game console, this is only a wild guess.

Re:

[pembo13]

I don't really see a good argument for anyone to modify saved games. There is zero benefit to the end user, unlike DRM on music. If the encryption disallowed use of the saved game, that would be problematic, but if it disallows mods of the saved game, that makes sense. Think modding your saved game to make you a level 10 player, not very nice if this game has to go online.

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:

[iamacat]

slashdot prevents users from applying a CSS filter to their personal copy of their discussion pages to block annoying comments from anonymous coward. Just another case of slashdot treating its visitors like criminals.

Re:

[SplatMan_DK]

Slashdot puts passwords on its user accounts.

Just another case of Slashdot treating its visitors like criminals.

Worse yet: Slashdot probably encrypts that password before storing it in their database!!! The bastards!!!

Yes. I agree. They are no better than the RIAA. Death to all websites who use passwords and enrypt them before storing them. We want freedom for all!

Btw, what is the username for your PayPal account?

Re:

[iamacat]

As a "player of these games", is it any business of yours how I play my copy of the game and weather I see stuff without going through a particular level? Online games are a different matter and it would be Ok if online savegames were signed by the server.

Re:Uhh

[arivanov]

No.

This means that Nintendo has a clue.

It is signing all the data with a certificate. Proper crypto, not DIY snakeoil ala most DRM schemes out there. The only way to break it is to get to the device key.

If they have done is right the key is per device and hardware protected by a crypto module. From there on breaking this at the crypto level is absolutely impossible.

The consequences are actually the opposite to what the clueless editor posted:

1. No chance for homebrew unless someone steals a cert from somewhere and even then Nintendo can simply revoke it using their online service or in a service pack.

2. All communication from the console to a server and back can be signed with strong crypto so no online game cheating.

As far as the elliptic curve cipher choice, this is a common choice for devices with very limited CPU or memory resources. That is what these ciphers are designed for.

All I can say: Applause Nintendo, applause, well done.

Re:

[John Betonschaar]

And why exactly would it be impossible to get the key if it's stored in hardware then? It might be impossible without a modchip, and it might be impossible with some kind of other software exploit to get to the hardware, but it's most definitely 'impossible' at all. The xbox 360 uses a similar encryption/signing mechanism (per-box key stored in the CPU, signed and encrypted kernel and savegames), and people have already found ways to get to it. Either through an exploitable kernel that enables booting linux

Re:

[arivanov]

It depends how well the system is designed and how pervasive is the PKI thoughout it. While it may be possible to introduce a MIM (man in the middle) via an exploit or via a timing attack on boot it may end up being prohibitively difficult.

For example, on a well designed system you cannot get the key, because it never leaves the hardware. As a result you have to intercept all requests to the crypto hardware and all replies. Depending on the implementation this may actually be quite hard. It may be useless

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't Wii savegames transferable between Wii's? That would indicate that its not per device wouldn't it? Unless its reencrypted during transition which makes that a new weak point.

Re:

[Splab]

Why does people insist on using it for breaking into the stuff? If you know the cypher and you got the key (it's in there somewhere) you can _create_ stuff that the WII think it has made itself - that way they might be able to get it to do what they want.

Re:Uhh

[batkiwi]

This is a save game, not in memory. It now takes 3.4 seconds to load/save instead of the 3.33339 it took without the crypto. Yippie fucking do?

Autosave to defeat quickloading?

[tepples]

This is a save game, not in memory. It now takes 3.4 seconds to load/save instead of the 3.33339 it took without the crypto.

Some games save continuously because they don't want the player to be able to revert to a previous saved state after having things go wrong; instead, they want the player to face the consequences of a poor decision. Think NetHack.

Re:

[jandrese]

That's pretty rare behavior on consoles though. The only game that I can think of that does that is the Golden Sun series on the GBA, and only because they want you to restart the whole level in the event that an enemy gets a lucky critical hit.

Re:

[jZnat]

The game you're thinking about is Fire Emblem. Well, the Fire Emblem series, but yeah, those games.

Re:

[jandrese]

Oops, that's what I get for posting too early in the morning. The game is actually Fire Emblem.

Re:

[AnyoneEB]

The only console game I can think of that acts like NetHack in that regard is Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Neither save constantly for that effect. All they have to do is do a write when the save is loaded so it can only be loaded once.

Re:

[edwdig]

Some games save continuously because they don't want the player to be able to revert to a previous saved state after having things go wrong; instead, they want the player to face the consequences of a poor decision. Think NetHack.

We're talking about a console with flash memory storage. Flash is rather slow to write to, and continual saving would wear out the flash fairly quickly.

Re:

[UnknownSoldier]

> Some games save continuously because t

The Wii Programming Guidelines (or Lot Check docs -- don't have the info at home but at work) dictate a maximum number of saving k/sec so as not to wear out the flash memory.

Re:

[pringlis]

'Hacking' save games is just one of the possible uses for this. The most worrying one for Nintendo is that it allows people to write their own code, sign that, fool the console into thinking it's a save game and then look for some program on the Wii which is happy to execute a block of code within a saved game. This can then be used to modify some properties of the console, usually nothing particularly drastic but I'm sure Nintendo don't want to take the risk.

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[Antique Geekmeister]

No, the most worrying for Nintendo is successful emulators that can run on non-Nintendo hardware. By locking down the savefiles, they retain control over savefiles, and over the ability of emulators to successfully save at all.

Re:

[Antique Geekmeister]

Are you under the impression that the emulator can wave a magic wand and have the commercial game software not do the savegame verification? That seems incredibly unlikely, if any components of the savegame authentication are built into the game software itself.

Re:Uhh

[Headcase88]

In terms of bricking consoles, Nintendo's a little bit nicer about it. They'll still brick it, but they'll warn you first "hey, if your console is modded, this update's going to brick it, so you might want to abort now".

By the way, with some games refusing to run without updating, this becomes one of those scenarios where if your console is modded, you have to get games illegally to make them work (assuming pirates have found a way to eliminate the code that forces the update).

Re:

[PhotoBoy]

There is a way to remove updates, it's a small program called Wii Brick Blocker that patches isos. It is rather ironic that Nintendo essentially force people into piracy with their updates...

Re:Uhh

[Volante3192]

Ironic? Only if you've modded your Wii. I've always considered a console in the realm of "no user servicable parts inside." Course, it's not like Nintendo plans to worry about every possible modding configuration available. Rather, they have a set piece of hardware and a set piece of software. Thus, designers know exactly what they have to code for.

Unlike Windows which you can get to install on damn near anything within reason.

I figure modders should get a second, control Wii if you will, that they can fall back on for games.

As much as I'm for tinkering, it's not like Nintendo's really promoting openess on their systems. Why should the modding community expect it? I feel the same way about the XBox and PS3 (although the PS3 not as much; Sony promoted the Linux part quite a bit).

Guess I'm just old fashioned in some ways. I like my consoles too much to tinker with em.

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[PhotoBoy]

I've been tinkering since the NES days, so it's an old habit now! :)

I do actually have a second control Wii, I mainly use it for VC games, but if Nintendo ever get any decent online going I will be able to use it for that as well.

"no user servicable parts inside"

[da5idnetlimit.com]

I happen to have a modded Xbox and a modded Wii

the Xbox has been my media center for about 4 years. I bought it the day it was easily moddable/hackable. It now plays the anime and movies from my server and also plays my dvds along with the games and imports. I really like the option to pay imports. I do speak and understand english, so there really is no reason I should wait 1-2 years for a game. Or movie...

After maybe 2.5 years the dvd reader died and I couldn't read discs anymore. I bought a replacement dvd player for the xbox and installed it myself, voiding my already dead warranty.

Morale of the story :

1 / I used my xbox in a "creative" way, exceeding by much what MS previewed/allowed me to do with it. I had fun with it, and I didn't have to build or buy a pre-made media center.

2 / When it got broken I just had to buy a small, cheap part. not a full xbox, as a "no user servicable parts inside" box concept would have made me.

Episode 2, the WII

Take story from ep.1, make hardware standard pc stuff as in xbox, rinse, repeat.

Guess I, too, am just old fashioned in some ways. I'm too cheap to have every piece of kit I want, so I like to tinker with consoles to give them all the bells and whistles I cannot afford otherwise...

Re:

[billcopc]

The modding community "expects it" because you own the goddamned hardware, it should be yours to tinker in whichever way you like.

When you buy a car, does the dealership forcefully prevent you from using "unapproved" gasoline ? Do they tell you which bumper stickers you're allowed to stick, and where ? Do they come and smash your car with a crowbar if you disobey ?

Re:

[jZnat]

You can get 91+ octane gasoline at most if not all gas stations. Hell, if you know how to refine crude oil into said gasoline, you can do it yourself and your car will still work. That's an issue of quality, not brand or some other arbitrary restriction.

Re:Uhh

[AgentPaper]

The point isn't that you can make and use your own gasoline, and by extension, the point with modified consoles is not that you can physically open up the case and install the modification. The issue at hand is the conflict between two points of view: that of the hack-minded consumer, who believes that he/she is entitled to do anything he/she pleases to a product that he/she owns, and that of the product manufacturer, who believes that it is entitled to stop hack-minded consumers from using their product in a non-approved manner.

Can you modify your game console - that is, are you physically capable of altering its hardware? Sure! You can make it run imported games, homebrew games, Linux, anything you please. Heck, you can turn it into a motion-sensitive coffeepot if you want. However, the console manufacturer never sold you a motion-sensitive coffeepot, and they are under no obligation to support it if that's what you build out of it. To continue the car analogy, this would be like converting your new gasoline-powered vehicle to run on biodiesel, and then complaining to the dealer when it won't run on gasoline anymore. You're completely within your rights to do that, but the carmaker is also within its rights to make you support it yourself by taking away your warranty.

Re:

[sjames]

I've always considered a console in the realm of "no user servicable parts inside."

He who owns it gets to modify it. It's one thing to refuse warranty service on hacked hardware, it's another entirely to deliberatly break it. If they want to keep modded boxes off of network games run from their servers, that's fine since it's their service and servers.

If as some say it's really just a possability that an end user mod may incidentally interact badly with a belssed update, that's just the cost of modify

Re:

[tomstdenis]

Arrg I was gonna mod in this thread but I have to reply ...

Sure, you are free to mod your Wii, but they don't have to support it, and you don't have to run updates (just don't bitch when future games don't run). Nintendo sold you a Wii, they intend to support the Wii. If you mess it up, it's your OWN DAMN FAULT.

It's like if I remove the front left tire from my car, then bitch that Ford won't service it under warranty because I should be free to do whatever I want to my care.

Simple fact is, if you mod your

Re:

[sjames]

Actually I agree with that UNLESS an update is released with the intent of bricking modified units (I'm not saying Nintendo has or has not done that, I don't know). There's a world of difference between an intentional act of sabotage and a modder-caused incompatibility.

The rest of my comment was similarly directed to the important difference between not supporting mods (perfectly OK) vs. actively defeating them (not OK).

Re:

[tomstdenis]

I'd like to think the ideal situation is not to alienate users, even those who aren't buying as many [any] games. They're not microsoft after all.

And given the track record with the GBA/DS so far they're not really causing a fuss.

Re:

[Lehk228]

AFAIK there is no deliberate bricking, but rather the update process and/or the newly updated system code can fail due to the presence of mods. Nintendo warns the user of this because they don't want an uproar about them sabotaging consoles if an update kills machines with a relatively common mod chip installed.

Re:Uhh

[PhotoBoy]

Actually no, I do not pirate games. I've been importing video games from the US and Japan since the days of the NES. I said it was ironic because if someone like myself had modded the system for imports and then bricked it, Nintendo would in theory have left them no choice but to pirate games or buy another Wii. Thankfully I have not bricked mine and can run imports without any problems. It simply seems odd to me that Nintendo would do something that would encourage piracy.

Next time try not to automatically assume modding = piracy, because it does not, no matter how much the hardware manufacturers like to say it does. If I could buy a mod chip that enables imports but not pirated games I gladly would. The constant erroneous association of modding with piracy by clueless people such as yourself has become extremely tiresome.

Re:

[Spokehedz]

No console to date has been bricked from an update downloaded from the Internet.

None.

Playing a game from another region, with a modchip that is designed to remove the region HAS bricked the Wii. It's fairly obvious why. Disc sees that your console is not up to date (1.5U =! 1.5E) and then it patches the flash. Since the TV and some other internal things are slightly differnt--you get a nice white paperweight.

Nintendo is simply covering their asses when it comes to the patches with the note about 'unauthoriz