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CCC · Console hackingCurated

Wii Fail: a strong architecture fails on details

Summary

bushing and marcan take apart the security architecture of the Nintendo Wii and show how several implementation errors rendered an impressive chain of trust useless. Several layers of protection do not help if they share the same unchecked assumption. Mass-market hardware turns rare implementation errors into permanently available research objects.

Ideas

  • The Wii spreads security functions across several processors and software layers.
  • Subtle errors made it possible to move from limited access to running custom software.
  • Unchangeable hardware errors make a complete repair after the fact difficult.

Recommendations

  • Reconstruct chains of trust from the first immutable code up to the application.
  • When developing devices, also consider recovery after keys have been compromised.

References

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CCC · 2017

Freeing robot vacuums from the manufacturer’s cloud

Dennis Giese and DanielAW examine connected robot vacuums, expose their data collection and internal Linux systems and show ways to run your own IoT cloud. A household appliance becomes a privacy risk as soon as its sensors are tied to someone else’s infrastructure. Owning a device remains incomplete if essential functions only work with a manufacturer cloud.

CCC · 2010

PS3 Epic Fail: When a chain of trust loses its keys

bushing, marcan and sven take console security apart and show how implementation errors made custom code possible on hardware that was supposedly fully controlled. The three of them gave the talk together. The focus is on the break of PlayStation 3 security at the time.

CCC · 2003

Examining devices with JTAG

The talk presents JTAG as a hardware-level interface for debugging processors, examining memory and analysing embedded devices. Manufacturing interfaces often turn into powerful analysis tools after production. Physical access fundamentally changes the threat model of embedded systems.