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PlayStation3 Forums => PS3 Hacking Forums => General Technical Hacking Discussion => Topic started by: simon5752 on February 22, 2009, 09:21:00 AM

Title: Getting Into The Filesystem....is It Possible?
Post by: simon5752 on February 22, 2009, 09:21:00 AM
Hi everyone,

I'm sorry if this question has been asked before but my searches on the forum turned up nothing! I basically want to be able to get into the HDD of my PS3 and see if I can find certain clues about its use, for example time-stamps, any logs, download lists etc. I know you can find most of this information from the XMB but I would like to know where it is stored on the HDD, and perhaps be able to view it in a hex editor. I've read in a few places that it is encrypted with 256 AES but i dont know whether anyone has found a way around this, perhaps in a similar manner to the hot swap technique used for the Xbox 360?

Thanks for any input
Title: Getting Into The Filesystem....is It Possible?
Post by: grimdoomer on March 19, 2009, 06:56:00 PM
I know nothing of PS3 but I might be able to give you some info. If the drives does infact use AES, then the key is on the console/net. I would say it's in the kernel or if the PS3 has a hypervisor? Either way you will need to dump the sectors of the HDD first. I could give you some code to do so, but I've never dump the sectors of an encrypted device, so I'm not sure if the pc will detect it as a device. I don't think you can hotswap, because that would mean the PS3 would have to decrypt the HDD then write the plaintext back to it, then apon shut down reencrypt and write the cipher text back.
Title: Getting Into The Filesystem....is It Possible?
Post by: f5inet on June 23, 2009, 04:04:00 AM
The HDD is crypted with:

AES+CBC+Byteswap.
the cipher uses 128bits blocks, and crypt 512bytes (a sector)
the AES can be 128 o 256bits, this is not clear yet. the AES is the same on all the HD
the IV of CBC is not clear yet. the IV is the same on every sector
the byteswap is made on the write time, swaping odd and even bytes between.

the filesystem of PS3 is UFS/UFS2 (posibly UFS2, for 64bits support), and is crypted with the AES+CBC+Byteswap described above

on flash upgrade, the PS3 creates 'on the fly' a FAT32 partition with the files to be flashed. the FAT32 partition is also crypted with AES+CBC+Byteswap. the FAT32 partition is wiped out after a succesful flash.

the linux partition is unencrypted.

sorry for my bad english. i am spanish.

This post has been edited by f5inet: Jun 23 2009, 11:05 AM
Title: Getting Into The Filesystem....is It Possible?
Post by: Kamasutra318 on July 08, 2009, 12:32:00 PM
Sooooo, I guess that's a no? I'd be very interested in any information on this as I had lightning strike my house and kill the PS3 among other things, but the hard drive is still functional. However, since no other PS3 will read the drive due to the key being some console ID I am unable to retrieve my saves and other data.
Title: Getting Into The Filesystem....is It Possible?
Post by: semitope on July 09, 2009, 02:57:00 PM
QUOTE(Kamasutra318 @ Jul 8 2009, 01:32 PM) View Post

Sooooo, I guess that's a no? I'd be very interested in any information on this as I had lightning strike my house and kill the PS3 among other things, but the hard drive is still functional. However, since no other PS3 will read the drive due to the key being some console ID I am unable to retrieve my saves and other data.


Another reason why i hate what sony did with the ps3. An encrypted HDD is all kinds of FAIL for a consumer.