[HN Gopher] Full key extraction of Nvidia TSEC
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Full key extraction of Nvidia TSEC
        
       Author : vitplister
       Score  : 571 points
       Date   : 2021-11-23 07:19 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gist.githubusercontent.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gist.githubusercontent.com)
        
       | pabs3 wrote:
       | Seems the other TSEC exploits mentioned might refer to these:
       | 
       | https://github.com/CAmadeus/falcon-tools
       | https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2021-3439...
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | These appear to be sha256 hashes of the keys, not the keys
       | themselves...?
        
         | zarzavat wrote:
         | I assume that's so it doesn't get immediately DMCA'd. They can
         | either distribute the keys separately or other people follow
         | the paper and the keys will become known.
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | Hat is off to the author for executing like that. I feel like I
       | missed out by never playing games, as cracking them seems like
       | the real game behind the game.
       | 
       | From a design perspective, this is why you don't have your entire
       | ecosystem depend on a shared secret stored in secure hardware,
       | even if they're written when the chip is still in the flasher at
       | the fab. You need either to diversify your keys in the flasher,
       | or do an initialization/personalization protocol to update the
       | keys to new unique per-console ones so that a crack like this
       | isn't portable across every other customer device. As a design
       | consideration, it means the customer has to be online to
       | personalize the device to get their unique keys, but that's the
       | trade off.
       | 
       | The beauty of demonstrating this attack is that if you think game
       | consoles with security modules are vulnerable to having ecosystem
       | compromising shared secrets extracted, wait until you see phones.
        
         | bo1024 wrote:
         | ......or this is why you let people own the hardware they
         | purchase and give up on this ridiculous "secure" boot idea?
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | Some features in NVIDIA chipsets, like changing the operating
       | frequency, needs (hardware checked, I think) signed binary blobs.
       | This prevents the open source nouveau driver from achieving good
       | performance. Does this hack helps in this front?
        
         | SSLy wrote:
         | no, this is about Tegra platform
        
           | salawat wrote:
           | That doesn't necessarily rule it out. Cryptography is one of
           | those things that once you get it down, you stick with it. It
           | is entirely possible this may give enough insight into
           | Nvidia's SOP with cryptography to extend the PoC proven on
           | Tegra to something like their firmware signing functionality
           | in GM 204 cards. At least, I haven't seen anything that
           | stands out enough to downright disclude the possibility from
           | possibly nudging things down the road, in theory.
        
       | encryptluks2 wrote:
       | This seems to indicate that this involves the Nintendo Switch,
       | but that it only involves older models where the first layer of
       | security was broken and now a second. Wouldn't the new models
       | have patched the first layer of security by now where this
       | wouldn't result in anything of value?
        
         | freeone3000 wrote:
         | Yes, HAC-0001-001 (better battery life) and HDH-001 (Lite) use
         | a new ROM revision with this patched out. But there are a _lot_
         | of original Switches out there.
        
       | Faaak wrote:
       | Holy cow. Reading these recaps I feel a lot the Impostor
       | Syndrome. I think I'm competent on what I do, but when I see
       | those guys it's hard not to feel really dumb.
       | 
       | Congrats to them !
        
         | atemerev wrote:
         | The same, of course, but now I know this: if you want to learn,
         | you will learn. If you spend 10 years keeping the passion, you
         | will become a magician. Most of us still have at least 10 years
         | of life remaining to spend on something exciting.
        
         | vadfa wrote:
         | Take into account that this particular post glosses over a
         | looot of stuff. A more detailed write-up would not make you
         | feel that dumb.
        
           | ChuckNorris89 wrote:
           | _> A more detailed write-up would not make you feel that
           | dumb._
           | 
           | Errr, no. Just because you would have more details and
           | everything would seem easier to understand and it's simple to
           | sit on the couch and be like _" yeah that looks simple, I
           | could have done that"_, because that still glosses over the
           | huge amount of research and the number of trails and errors
           | the author put in not just during this project but throughout
           | his career to get to this point where everything _Just
           | Works(tm)_ for him so he can make it look simple for everyone
           | else.
           | 
           | Just like with Edison and the light bulb, even if the end
           | result seems very simple in hindsight, the process of getting
           | there is definitely not.
        
             | vadfa wrote:
             | This is like studying a technical subject in university...
             | As you said, you wouldn't know how they reached that
             | knowledge, but at least you would understand how the matter
             | itself works.
        
             | sumtechguy wrote:
             | I still fall into that same trap. Oh wow these guys amazing
             | (they probably are). But when you watch a presentation it
             | has this weird effect of compressing what took them
             | weeks/months/years to do into a 45 min presentation, making
             | you feel really bad. I try to remind jr devs the same
             | thing. I am showing you this thing I have been working on.
             | They had no idea I was working on it. But suddenly I have
             | hundreds of lines of code and it all 'just works'. It makes
             | me look like a wizard to them. But I remind them I spent
             | the past 4 months working on that thing, do not feel bad or
             | stupid. It just takes time and failing thousands of times
             | over and over.
        
           | snthd wrote:
           | To loosely paraphase Feynman - the fact the author can
           | explain it so clearly to those not deep in the field
           | demonstrates a real understanding and depth.
           | 
           | (Feynman said something like, if you can't explain it to a
           | layman you don't really understand it.)
        
           | nkurz wrote:
           | Maybe, or maybe not. Presumably that "more detailed write-up"
           | would be something like the third footnote:
           | https://yifan.lu/2019/02/22/attacking-hardware-aes-with-dfa/.
           | Despite being much more detailed, I still felt just about as
           | dumb! :)
        
           | baq wrote:
           | on the contrary, it'd make me feel a lot dumber...
        
             | wingerlang wrote:
             | You can do a lot with persistence too. I recently tried to
             | reverse engineer some software protection. Ultimately I
             | decided to cut my losses but the 2-3 weeks I spent on it
             | was a very gradual chipping into more and more advanced
             | stuff. Now imagine having years of experience, and chipping
             | away over years. One "wow" moment in a blog article might
             | have taken 3 months of headaches to reach.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | Reading the blog post, it sounds like a supergenius' long
               | weekend, so the timeline O(months) is not to be skipped
               | over. 1% genius, 99% perspiration. Or more recently, "an
               | overnight success after trying for 10 years".
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | Same, but I keep reminding me that I grew up with different
         | interests and a different set of skill sets. Web development
         | and the like sounds boring in comparison though.
        
           | secondaryacct wrote:
           | And maybe these guys would have trouble delivering week after
           | week productive changes in a system used for important things
           | by important people.
           | 
           | After all, all this genius did is open a nintendo switch to
           | eventually run software made by you for free. The contrary of
           | productive work I d say and close to parasitism.
           | 
           | Or so you can tell yourself when you feel down :D
        
             | x3ro wrote:
             | I think that allowing me to run whichever software I
             | choose, on a device I paid lots of money for is, is a great
             | service to society. Essentially the exact opposite of
             | parasitism, especially considering these people are doing
             | it for free.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Yes, but you did buy the device knowing full well its
               | limitations and obviously felt it was worth it in the
               | end.
        
               | southerntofu wrote:
               | The trillion dollar question is how to get rid of
               | parasitic corporations (capitalism) ruining our lives for
               | a profit, making it so we need dedicated hackers to do
               | something as "simple" as owning our hardware.
        
               | asimpletune wrote:
               | I think voting... more
        
               | southerntofu wrote:
               | How so? Has voting ever brought any major social change?
               | If anything, history has shown that when a vote threatens
               | the status quo, an armed coup financed by the industry
               | (and often foreign imperialism) will take place (see:
               | Allende, Sankara, etc).
               | 
               | I think the situation about voting is summarized pretty
               | well by this funny rap clip form the 2016 USA elections:
               | https://yewtu.be/watch?v=D9Qv6S_GtLo
        
               | djbusby wrote:
               | Most big societal change was done through riots, not so
               | much voting.
               | 
               | Boston Tea Party, Union strikes/riots, guillotine.
               | 
               | Oligarchs slow boil the proles until they pop.
        
             | erikbye wrote:
             | No trouble, but man, how boring.
        
         | alickz wrote:
         | Computer Science is a wide field. You are not an impostor for
         | not understanding all components of the field.
         | 
         | For example, an oncologist is not expected to have the same
         | understanding of bacteria as a microbiologist and they aren't
         | an impostor for not knowing.
         | 
         | But I feel you, whenever I read the more technical posts on HN
         | I feel the same way.
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | In this case it's computer science paired with a bit of
           | hardware engineering ;)
        
           | tomxor wrote:
           | I agree with both of you, but still kinda feel like this is
           | wizardry in action...
           | 
           | Because it comes from that special perspective of being able
           | to xray through the entire stack, all the way down the
           | physics of the electronics driving the thing while keeping
           | the context of all the other layers in mind to see how
           | different parts can be manipulated to get the results you
           | want. I get the most enjoyment out of my work when doing this
           | with higher level layers, but being able to do it at the
           | hardware end must feel exhilarating, because that's really
           | how it all works.
        
         | rmbyrro wrote:
         | I sometimes feel like that and agree with other comment about
         | the oncologist.
         | 
         | To add one cent: most of us have to be "productive" in a sense
         | that requires us to use a LOT of abstractions.
         | 
         | The author went the other way, understanding how things work
         | under the hood in quite a deep level.
         | 
         | It's truly awesome, but you also have to appreciate how
         | abstractions have their place in modern software dev industry.
        
       | tomc1985 wrote:
       | I've been out of the security game for a while, this almost reads
       | like fiction. Good god this is nuts. I've heard of extracting
       | keys with timing attacks but this is even more impressive!
       | 
       | Also, apparently the Switch perma-pwn got pwned? Sad face...
       | 
       | Also also, I hope other popular cryptoprocessors aren't so
       | vulnerable?
        
         | Mindwipe wrote:
         | > Also also, I hope other popular cryptoprocessors aren't so
         | vulnerable?
         | 
         | You might be surprised, but also this chip wasn't intended to
         | be used to secure a chain of trust but had to be press ganged
         | into service after being let down by the main bootrom, which
         | was done by a team at NVidia without much experience of doing
         | these things and made a lot of elementary errors. And being
         | used for a games console is painting a big target on your back.
         | 
         | But ultimately a lot of secure chipset areas have been subject
         | to a lot of... learning on the job shall we say. Things are
         | much better than they used to be, but you don't have to go back
         | many years before things get very hairy. People constantly say
         | they want more OS version support for Android, but I would not
         | want to use a five year old processor from Samsung or Qualcomm
         | if I cared about the hardware backed security on my phone.
        
           | my123 wrote:
           | > but you don't have to go back many years before things get
           | very hairy
           | 
           | For the NV TSEC-equivalent Falcon successor on Ampere, it's
           | indeed not vulnerable to this attack because that security
           | subsystem was made much more secure.
           | 
           | But that's an arch released in... 2020.
        
           | mschuster91 wrote:
           | > People constantly say they want more OS version support for
           | Android, but I would not want to use a five year old
           | processor from Samsung or Qualcomm if I cared about the
           | hardware backed security on my phone.
           | 
           | What I would really like is a modern Android that doesn't
           | brick half the security features by e-fuse when I root it and
           | many apps refuse to run properly afterwards - why the fuck,
           | for example, does the PayPal app refuse fingerprint unlocking
           | after rooting but other apps don't?! All this incentivizes me
           | as the user is to choose an insecure password that I can
           | actually remember.
        
             | striking wrote:
             | I'm fairly certain you're not eFused out, but you would
             | have to give up your root and let your phone powerwash
             | itself if you wanted things to go back to normal.
        
               | mschuster91 wrote:
               | Samsung Knox fires an e-fuse the moment you flash an
               | alternative boot image.
        
             | no_time wrote:
             | Its a small miracle paypal doesnt flat out prevent you from
             | running the app when rooted.
        
         | scandinavian wrote:
         | > Also, apparently the Switch perma-pwn got pwned? Sad face...
         | 
         | All erista units (the ones with the bootrom flaw) are still
         | pwnable.
         | 
         | 6.2.0 was released on November 19, 2018 - first indication of a
         | new hack was posted on twitter Nov 24, 2018 by @elmirorac and
         | atmosphere 0.8.0 was released on Nov 29, 2018. So the fix he
         | talks about in the paste lasted for around 10 days before a new
         | one was generally available.
         | 
         | That's why he says:
         | 
         | > And it would have been perfect if not for the many security
         | flaws in TSEC secure boot.
        
       | a-dub wrote:
       | so how does this voltage glitching stuff work exactly? are caps
       | to ground/buffers removed/defeated? is it timing dependent?
       | (sounds like they're sending i2c messages to the power circuitry
       | here?) do people do things like setup precise triggers or hook up
       | function generators to kick the supply voltage around and just
       | wait to get lucky?
        
         | bonzini wrote:
         | See here: https://yifan.lu/2019/02/22/attacking-hardware-aes-
         | with-dfa/
        
         | Retr0spectrum wrote:
         | More commonly, voltage glitching does rely on removing
         | capacitors etc., and extremely precise timing (nanosecond
         | resolution, or below).
         | 
         | However, the fun part about this particular attack is that it
         | does not require quite the same level of precision. The voltage
         | is dropped incrementally until the CPU starts to make faulty
         | calculations. It just so happens that AES is one of the most
         | complex operations, and thus, the first to start faulting.
        
         | voxadam wrote:
         | If you're interested in voltage glitching and other power
         | analysis attacks you should take a look the excellent open
         | source ChipWhisper.
         | 
         | https://chipwhisperer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/cou...
         | 
         | https://chipwhisperer.readthedocs.io
         | 
         | https://www.newae.com/chipwhisperer
         | 
         | https://embedded.fm/episodes/286 (podcast interview)
        
         | pjc50 wrote:
         | Hilariously it appears you can just direct the system to turn
         | down its own supply voltage for you (I2C to the PMIC, as you
         | spotted), and that one of the levels has a bit error rate
         | that's low enough to run programs most of the time but triggers
         | a bit flip in AES often enough to leak the key.
        
           | bradfa wrote:
           | A properly designed crypto subsystem that cared about
           | security would detect the voltage drop and either refuse to
           | operate or would have its own local power regulation circuits
           | such that a system level voltage reduction wouldn't impact
           | it.
           | 
           | I presume the CPU here was _VERY_ cost conscious and so
           | trade-offs were made.
           | 
           | I have no background in gaming but have worked with flawed
           | "security" solutions. Often the business does not care that
           | the engineers explain how flawed some security thing is
           | before release, if there's more money to be made by not
           | fixing it then it won't get fixed. Often doing all of the
           | right things is _MUCH_ too expensive, either in dollars,
           | size, or power.
        
             | Mindwipe wrote:
             | > I presume the CPU here was VERY cost conscious and so
             | trade-offs were made.
             | 
             | It was also more intended as a media chipset and they
             | managed to flog it to Nintendo, and was an early effort by
             | the team involved.
        
             | baybal2 wrote:
             | > would have its own local power regulation circuits such
             | that a system level voltage reduction wouldn't impact it.
             | 
             | How do you know if external voltage is low if you check it
             | against... a voltage derived from it?
        
               | joshvm wrote:
               | Almost all micros have brown out detection so you can
               | tell if the device undervolts, and typically you can
               | force the device to auto shut down/reset if that
               | condition trips using an onboard programmable fuse. I
               | don't know how much of an attack surface your typical BOD
               | circuit is though.
               | 
               | https://microchipdeveloper.com/8avr:bod
        
               | pjc50 wrote:
               | This is called brownout detection, and it's a common
               | feature even on low-end microcontrollers. As the other
               | commenter says, it's derivable from a bandgap reference.
               | 
               | In re "properly secured system": it's a cost-sensitive
               | games console for children, while there's a big incentive
               | against piracy ultimately there's a limit to how much you
               | can defend. And this is the _second_ line of defense, the
               | bootloader having been breached earlier.
        
               | floatboth wrote:
               | The whole "games console" context also comes waaaay after
               | the chip was made -- it's not a custom for-Nintendo chip!
               | tegra210 was previously used in the Nvidia Shield 2015,
               | then the Google Pixel C (also from 2015) and the Jetson
               | TX1 dev board.
        
               | baybal2 wrote:
               | Bandgap reference can't tell anything about body bias
               | voltage, unless it itself built on top of insulator
        
               | thebruce87m wrote:
               | Isn't that what bandgap voltages are for?
               | 
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandgap_voltage_reference
        
         | blincoln wrote:
         | Yes to all of your questions. A lot of it can be automated with
         | e.g. a ChipWhisperer.
        
         | dbuder wrote:
         | Yes and after a while it isn't luck. Reportedly state actors
         | and bigcorp even go so far as to decap chips, laser off
         | security features/caps/whatever and do stuff like inspect the
         | memory with a microscope. There is another youtube channel that
         | is even more impressive but Liveoverflow
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FktI4qSjzaE has some videos
         | defeating AES with device that makes it much easier.
        
           | zwirbl wrote:
           | Now I'm curious, which channel is even more impressive?
           | LiveOverflow is definitely great
        
             | dbuder wrote:
             | Can't find it, however you might be interested in this
             | article from HN earlier in the year. Written/done by an
             | intern.
             | 
             | https://research.nccgroup.com/2020/10/15/theres-a-hole-in-
             | yo...
        
           | amboar wrote:
           | One of my favourite talks is Decapping Chips the Hard Way by
           | Adam Laurie and Zac Franken: https://youtu.be/0Z4aF-qiziM
           | 
           | That was 8 years ago
        
             | sannysanoff wrote:
             | how long before they will introduce special bad sectors on
             | floppy disks, - sorry, wrong epoch, - special half-faulty
             | components required for proper execution in chips to
             | disable chip simulation/reverse engineering.
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | I'll never forget the crack that I downloaded back in the
               | days. It came with a PDF or image of a CD you were
               | supposed to print, so you could drill through the burned
               | CD at exactly the proper position. This was supposed to
               | defeat the hardware dongle the software otherwise
               | required. Can't remember what software it was and never
               | tried it to find out if this was a prank or actually
               | worked, but I loved that as a kid :D
        
               | Agentlien wrote:
               | That sounds unlikely to work. I had a professor at the
               | university who started his lecture on ECC by saying he
               | always drilled a hole in all his CDs since he knew it
               | would work anyway.
               | 
               | Or perhaps the ECC simply works well enough that there's
               | no perceptible data loss for audio?
        
               | aasasd wrote:
               | Wouldn't the CD explode soon after it got to speed? This
               | happened plenty to discs that were just not made
               | uniformly enough.
        
               | a-dub wrote:
               | i think your leg was being pulled.
               | 
               | that said, one of the first copy protection schemes
               | involved writing specific sectors to a magnetic disk with
               | an invalid checksum. when the program would start, it
               | would verify that reading those sectors would return an
               | error, but if you used a regular disk copy program it
               | would not copy the invalid sectors- either resulting in
               | an aborted copy or a copy that would zero out the bad
               | sectors on the target which would not produce the
               | expected read errors on startup telling the program it
               | had been copied.
        
               | xyzzy123 wrote:
               | Yes, there are schemes that deliberately exploit
               | difficult-to-reproduce manufacturing defects, for things
               | like fingerprinting / making hard-to-clone things.
               | 
               | The general field is called PUF (physically uncloneable
               | functions)
               | 
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_unclonable_funct
               | ion
        
               | azalemeth wrote:
               | This effectively already exists. The Xbox One SOC
               | apparently monitors its own voltage and shuts down /
               | doesn't function if it falls out of spec [1] as part of a
               | totally OTT suite of anti-engineer techniques.
               | 
               | As an aside, I _hate_ all of this. If someone made an
               | open console, I 'd buy it in a second. I realise that's
               | probably my computer running linux next to me, but
               | still...
               | 
               | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
        
               | michaelt wrote:
               | Almost all microcontrollers have a feature like that -
               | chiefly because at power-on the voltage rises gradually,
               | and if it started running before there was a high enough
               | voltage for it to run _correctly_ you get a bunch of
               | reliability issues.
        
               | h2odragon wrote:
               | > If someone made an open console,
               | 
               | Steam Deck?
        
               | Eduard wrote:
               | What is OTT?
        
               | johntb86 wrote:
               | The Z80 had deceptively-designed transistors designed to
               | throw off reverse engineers: https://twitter.com/kenshirr
               | iff/status/1331425858268012545
        
       | snthd wrote:
       | Why are there valuable keys on the device? I (wrongly) assumed
       | the device would only contain public keys to verify signed code.
        
         | Namidairo wrote:
         | They're AES keys, so the keys to decrypt and encrypt are the
         | same. (Symmetric key)
        
       | ChuckMcM wrote:
       | Wow, this was the first I had read about m2m i2c injection hacks
       | to mess with the PMIC. That is a clever trick!
        
       | sva_ wrote:
       | The concept of undervolting the chip, causing bitflips, to do a
       | differential fault analysis[0] seems like a stroke of genius. I
       | had no idea AES could be broken in such a fashion, of interfering
       | with just the last 1-2 rounds of the cipher.
       | 
       | I wonder if it will be mitigated by requiring a larger minimum
       | voltage?
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_fault_analysis
        
         | Mindwipe wrote:
         | Either that or pausing crypto operations without the required
         | voltage, but that reduces your fault tolerance.
        
         | baybal2 wrote:
         | > I wonder if it will be mitigated by requiring a larger
         | minimum voltage?
         | 
         | How would you detect low voltage without a reference voltage?
        
           | hashimotonomora wrote:
           | p-n junctions have a threshold forward voltage.
        
             | baybal2 wrote:
             | Which will not tell you anything without knowing the body
             | bias voltage on CMOS, which is set relative to power rails.
        
             | frumiousirc wrote:
             | which is temperature dependent
        
           | 95014_refugee wrote:
           | How do you think "reference voltages" work?
           | 
           | (Also, temperature sensors. Sheesh people.)
        
         | exikyut wrote:
         | Ha, that mentions "DFA was also applied on AES", citing a 2005
         | reference. Is the OP article being understatedly humble? ;)
        
         | sdfgsdvf wrote:
         | Voltage glitching for secret/rom extraction has a long and
         | storied history.
         | 
         | It's the basis of how DirecTV cards were compromised in the
         | late 90s/early 00s.
        
           | Scoundreller wrote:
           | Or a good cover for the leakers
        
             | monocasa wrote:
             | I've seen the technique reproduced enough that I'm pretty
             | convinced it's not a cover.
        
       | jesuspiece wrote:
       | Hardware attacks never cease to amaze me. nice work, thanks for
       | sharing
        
       | sarahmike wrote:
       | I they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was
       | all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do. Copy
       | Here---->>>www.foxlineblog.com
        
       | 1_player wrote:
       | As a boring software engineer nowadays, these hackers "for fun
       | and profit" make me proud of our profession. They're like a Robin
       | Hood version of Alan Turing & co. working on cracking the Enigma
       | encryption. No matter how tight the black box is, there is always
       | a gap somewhere.
       | 
       | I've done some reversing when I was younger, cracked some
       | software and hardware locks, there's nothing as exhilarating as
       | breaking through something that looked impossible. Well done!
        
         | jackjackk0 wrote:
         | Just recently bumped into a podcast on the xbox hacker scene
         | (https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/) and was really
         | fascinated by the dedication, ingenuity and talent of these
         | people. I am also amazed that you don't hear often enough
         | stories of them receiving job offers from the companies they
         | targeted/"hacked".
        
           | 1_player wrote:
           | What's great is that it's mostly done for the street cred. To
           | show off how cool you are, you need to work in the public,
           | and present your results for all to see, for free.
           | 
           | "This is how cool I am. I have cracked it before everybody
           | else."
           | 
           | They're positioned on the complete opposite of the modern
           | corporate, capitalist Internet, keeping computers open and
           | still cool. For that, I salute them.
        
             | __alexs wrote:
             | While I'm sure street cred plays a factor there is also
             | good money in being able to break the protections to enable
             | piracy.
        
               | bri3d wrote:
               | I don't think this is true anymore, having had experience
               | in this space.
               | 
               | In the "bad old days," you could make a moderate (nothing
               | like Silicon Valley engineer money) sum by selling
               | exploits to modchip manufacturers, as they'd then use
               | this to drive their hardware sales - pretty simple model.
               | The last one of these I remember being particularly
               | popular was the PS3 "True Blue" dongle.
               | 
               | These days, exploits aren't particularly useful to drive
               | hardware sales as they're mostly hardware free. So
               | there's not a ton of monetary value - yes, you could try
               | to sell a "custom firmware" for a few months, but once
               | the exploit is reversed, it's game over for your income
               | stream.
               | 
               | Cheating is probably the only major revenue stream left
               | in console exploitation, and as far as I know it's not
               | popular enough to drive high prices for console exploits.
               | Compared to phone exploits (wanted by nation-level actors
               | and shady security firms for mostly evil purposes), ECU
               | exploits (easier to protect and worth more per install),
               | and PC exploit bug bounties, I think console hacking is
               | pretty low on the lucrative scale, which is why so much
               | more of it is done in the open.
        
               | deelowe wrote:
               | There seems to be some suspicion that there is a cottage
               | industry forming around undetectable cheats for
               | streamers... Not sure how true this is.
        
               | KennyBlanken wrote:
               | This wouldn't surprise me in the least, in shooting
               | games. People don't like watching someone getting their
               | ass kicked.
               | 
               | Also, to succeed as a streamer you have to stream ~40
               | hours a week or more, and there's something called "aim
               | fatigue". After an hour or so without breaks, your aim
               | goes downhill. Anyone who maintains amazing aim for hours
               | of continuous play is cheating. That's why you see
               | experienced, successful streamers taking breaks, or
               | interspersing "hang out time" or a non-aim-based game,
               | etc.
               | 
               | Stream framerates / compression can make it difficult to
               | tell what's going on, and using a controller means it's
               | nearly impossible to see whether their controller
               | movement matches on-screen movement. But controller aim
               | assist is so strong in many games these days that if you
               | have experience with a controller you can easily dominate
               | all but the top mouse and keyboard players.
               | 
               | Shooting-based games just aren't fun these days. Between
               | the cheaters and the streamers you get your ass handed to
               | you pretty regularly, except when matchmaking throws you
               | an easy game to keep you from rage-quitting.
        
               | R0b0t1 wrote:
               | They haven't been fun for a long time. I realized ages
               | ago performance was mostly ping based. You had to have
               | skill if your ping was OK, but if you didn't have a good
               | ping, no amount of skill would help you.
        
               | throwaway09223 wrote:
               | Are you sure? How exactly would this be monetized?
               | 
               | By publishing the exploit they lose any market advantage.
        
           | jjoonathan wrote:
           | For real. The talent in the game industry is insane.
           | Recently, I got my mind blown by the Unreal Nanite team:
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eviSykqSUUw
           | 
           | The core of it is a respectably sophisticated LOD building
           | algorithm, as you might expect, but the sheer amount of
           | engineering horsepower they put into driving it into
           | production just boggles the mind.
        
             | TaylorAlexander wrote:
             | Oh cool talk! I was impressed by that system when it was
             | announced and I had no idea they had released an explainer!
        
           | 14 wrote:
           | I used to follow he Xbox 360 hacking scene and the number of
           | things these guys did would blow your mind away. Most notable
           | when Microsoft increased the size of their games from the
           | standard 7.5gb to something like 8gb. There were no 8gb DVD's
           | on market where you could burn the games. Initially hackers
           | truncated the games and it worked for a bit with unnecessary
           | buffer data removed but Microsoft got wise to this and found
           | out how to detect it and banned a bunch of people using
           | truncated games. What happened next was amazing. Hackers
           | found a way to flash the DVD burner drive of certain models
           | to actually burn 8gb on. 7.5gb disc! The outside edge of the
           | disc is actually not entirely used the disc writing software
           | would leave it alone I believe reason being it is
           | inconsistent in quality at the very edge and you may get a
           | bad write if you use it. Well hackers didn't care if you may
           | get a bad write you may also get a good one. They hacked
           | certain DVD drives I believe the one I ended up buying was a
           | lite-on drive with certain firmware. I then flashed its
           | firmware and was now able to write on the outer edge of the
           | disc doing the previously impossible. That is only one scene
           | form the Xbox hacking days I fondly remember. Genius if you
           | ask me.
        
             | Scoundreller wrote:
             | It's like overclocking "what if I told the cpu to... just
             | go faster?"
        
           | MaxBarraclough wrote:
           | If you haven't seen it, there's a great talk on YouTube on
           | the Xbox One's security. Surprisingly, it's from a senior
           | Microsoft engineer.
           | 
           |  _Guarding Against Physical Attacks: The Xbox One Story --
           | Tony Chen, Microsoft_ -
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
           | 
           | Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325421
        
           | MayeulC wrote:
           | How coincidental, I was reading this two hours ago after
           | finding it in my documents while sorting trough them.
           | 
           | I can really recommend this, if only as a cautionary tale
           | against password reuse.
        
         | iamtedd wrote:
         | I love hearing these stories too!
         | 
         | Here's a video of someone finally cracking into the Sega Saturn
         | well after the console was current commodity:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E&t=202s
        
           | JohnBooty wrote:
           | He eventually released a commercial product, the Satiator,
           | and I'm happy to say that it works great and is very well
           | supported by the creator himself and the community!
           | 
           | For those unfamiliar, the Satiator is an adapter of sorts
           | that lets you load Saturn ISOs onto an SD card and play them
           | via the Saturn's MPEG adapter slot.
           | 
           | Unlike many solutions on various consoles that bypass the
           | optical drive, no hardware modifications are required. Your
           | Saturn stays intact; it's truly plug-and-play.
           | 
           | This sort of thing is important. Consoles (specifically
           | moving parts, like the optical drives) and physical media
           | from the 90s are failing. Surviving consoles and games can be
           | quite expensive; even thousands of dollars. Emulation is
           | imperfect and introduces lag. Satiator and other flashcarts
           | let us play these games on original hardware and bypass these
           | issues.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | Not game related, but this is what I like about the
             | MagicLantern hack for Canon cameras. It's just some data on
             | your card that gets loaded at boot. If you use a card
             | without the data on it, the camera boots/peforms as a
             | regular stock camera. No hacking of the software on the
             | camera itself.
        
       | sarahmike wrote:
       | I they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was
       | all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do. Copy
       | Here---->>>www.foxlineblog.com
        
       | sydthrowaway wrote:
       | Seriously, security is an utterly pointless field
        
       | 1MachineElf wrote:
       | What is a TSEC?
       | 
       | EDIT:                 Well, some clever guy ;-) reminded them
       | that the T210 chip (the main CPU)       has a proprietary NVIDIA
       | "security processor" called TSEC, which has: [2]
       | (1) its own SRAM                 (protected from the rest of the
       | system)           (2) its own "secure boot"        (protected
       | from the rest of the system)           (3) bus mastering
       | capabilities           (4) and.. is able to DMA to ARM7's memory
        
         | jaywalk wrote:
         | Tegra Security Co-processor
        
       | vigneshdasan wrote:
       | GST on IT sector will attract 18% on software services provided
       | by software companies. https://www.breziot.com/
        
         | punk_ihaq wrote:
         | How is this remotely relevant to the post or any other
         | comments? Please do not spam.
        
       | JohnCurran wrote:
       | > If you can get 1-2 bitflips in the last two rounds, you can
       | solve for the key.
       | 
       | What about the bit flips allows the key to be solved for? That is
       | the part of this I don't understand
        
       | hkopp wrote:
       | The magic to me is that the CPU glitches are caused completely on
       | the software side. With dedicated hardware such as flying probe
       | testers this attack is state-of-the-art afaik. But glitching the
       | CPU only with software, i.e., causing hardware bugs only with
       | software is what really surprised me.
        
       | yborg wrote:
       | It seems from accomplishments like this from amateurs that state
       | level actors will have compromised any current "secure" or
       | "trusted" computing platform.
        
         | make3 wrote:
         | I'm not sure why you claim that this is an amateur. Yes, this
         | is likely a project done in their spare time, but there is no
         | reason to think that this person is not a professional security
         | analyst
        
       | Jugurtha wrote:
       | I love everything about this. It has brought joy to my day.
        
       | xaduha wrote:
       | Why aren't more devices use smartcards for signing/crypto? They
       | are omnipresent, satellite TV receivers had them, phones have
       | them, banking cards ARE them. And yet gaming console
       | manufacturers would rather invent their own measures to combat
       | pwnage/piracy.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | The TSEC is basically a smart card built in to the SoC.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | floatboth wrote:
         | A cheaply made smartcard chip should be much easier to breach
         | than the main SoC. Both because it's way simpler, older process
         | silicon... and much more importantly because you have an
         | external bus going to it. Now that the big consoles use semi-
         | custom SoCs, their NUMBER ONE principle is to not trust
         | anything that's off the main silicon die.
         | 
         | See the Xbox security talk:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
        
         | mschuster91 wrote:
         | > satellite TV receivers had them
         | 
         | And regularly get their card security schemes busted.
         | 
         | The advantage that smartcards currently have is that not many
         | people are looking into their security outside of pay-TV
         | pirates. Phone users don't have a need to hack their own SIM
         | cards, friends of OpenBTS simply use blank SIM cards, bank
         | users don't need to hack their own cards, and card cloners have
         | a hard time getting physical access to the chip on a victim
         | card for long enough to run a software-based attack (since the
         | ATM eats the card and spits it out when done, it is easy enough
         | for a skimmer device to clone the stripe while the card passes,
         | but outright impossible to establish electrical contact with
         | the chip).
         | 
         | What _is_ interesting to hackers is anything where NFC can be
         | exploited, and as a result - at least to my knowledge - there
         | currently is no tag-based authentication that can 't be cloned.
        
           | xaduha wrote:
           | > And regularly get their card security schemes busted.
           | 
           | It was wild west, proper ones were never cracked to my
           | knowledge. But it's probably safe to say because of that they
           | are as secure as they are now.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_access#Digital_sys.
           | ..
           | 
           | > there currently is no tag-based authentication that can't
           | be cloned.
           | 
           | Smartcards use ISO 14443, not NFC. Those are related
           | standards I think.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443
           | 
           | MIFARE tags and cards (which you can clone) are not
           | smartcards (which you can't clone)
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIFARE
        
             | Mindwipe wrote:
             | > It was wild west, proper ones were never cracked to my
             | knowledge.
             | 
             | Some did, some got close. Most card based systems have to
             | replace the cards every five years or so when their intel
             | suggests groups are getting nearer cracking them.
             | 
             | Ultimately the reason is cost. The conditional access
             | vendors who work on those cards spend a lot lot lot of
             | money on it because that's their entire business and they
             | need to work for a long time or you pay out tens of
             | millions in postage and support. Most chipset vendors shrug
             | their shoulders after two years because it's out of support
             | and they don't care, everyone else gets broken too. In this
             | case Nintendo probably got some significant compensation of
             | Nvidia that hurt them, but it was Nvidia's first real go at
             | it and they fluffed it.
        
               | xaduha wrote:
               | > Most card based systems have to replace the cards every
               | five years or so when their intel suggests groups are
               | getting nearer cracking them.
               | 
               | Do they still? Proper smartcards like javacards can be
               | updated by the receiver, it wouldn't affect existing
               | customers if there's a protocol version change or
               | something like that. It's pirates and missed revenue they
               | need to worry about. In any case with internet so
               | widespread those satellite TV networks were on their way
               | out for a long time.
        
           | elzbardico wrote:
           | Do ATMs in the US still read the magstripe?
        
             | voxadam wrote:
             | Yes, unfortunately. We're a more than a little bit behind
             | the rest of the civilized world.
             | 
             | Even my debit card which includes a mandatory EMV smartcard
             | provides for an easy downgrade attack if the chip fails to
             | read three times.
        
       | oh_sigh wrote:
       | Does this txt seem to end early for anyone else? How does one go
       | from the bit-flipped output to the key?
        
         | nemothekid wrote:
         | That's covered in the referenced article,
         | https://yifan.lu/2019/02/22/attacking-hardware-aes-with-dfa/,
         | in the `Extracting keys` section
        
       | louthy wrote:
       | Heh, I had a little laugh to myself reading this bit:
       | 
       | > (2) its own "secure boot"
       | 
       | As soon as you see the quotes, you know what's coming! It's like
       | Chekhov's gun :)
        
       | jturpin wrote:
       | I'm sure this took a lot of effort and more knowledge than I'll
       | ever have. All of this effort could have gone to doing something
       | constructive, and instead it's gone to breaking a system so that
       | a small handful of people can run software (be honest, game
       | emulators) on it, and presumably support further piracy of the
       | system. There are already a trillion devices out there that can
       | run emulators, we don't need another one.
        
       | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
       | What is the implications of breaching these keys?
        
       | toxik wrote:
       | Are these numbers "illegal" to share like the BluRay key?
        
         | throaway46546 wrote:
         | Remember Digg?
        
         | edg-l wrote:
         | interesting related article:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number
        
         | IiydAbITMvJkqKf wrote:
         | Based on the file contents, these are just the sha256 hashes of
         | the keys, not the keys themselves.
        
           | toxik wrote:
           | Right, but the actual key itself then?
        
         | Y_Y wrote:
         | Like this?
         | 
         | > sha256(csecret_01)=43449338c1bc8ceb1b3232a611f955f9095254f492
         | 117a158528589cd16f2930 NVIDIA TSEC code signing key
         | 
         | Hopefully not.
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-23 23:02 UTC)