PS3 ELF/SELF/PRX/SPRX PPU Loader Update for IDA v5.2 out!

[PS3 News]

Today xorloser has posted an update to his previous PS3 ELF/SELF/PRX/SPRX PPU Loader for http://www.hex-rays.com/idapro/idadown.htm v5.2.

To quote: I've been busy digging into the PS3 lately, I decided it's finally time to see what secrets can be extracted from it. During my investigations I found that level-1 syscalls, a.k.a. hypercalls, are not handled by IDA so I decided to add support for it to the existing PPC Altivec plugin. Get the updated plugins and copy them to your "IDAplugins" directory to install them.

Download: http://xorloser.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ppcaltivec-plugin-for-ida-v52.rar

For those who don't know, level-1 syscalls are used to call hypervisor functions. On a PS3 the hypervisor is known as as "lv1? (level1) since it is the lowest level that runs directly on top of the hardware.

The operating system is executed on top of this and is known as "lv2? (level2). The two common operating systems are GameOS which PS3 games run on, and OtherOS which is usually used to run linux.

Since both OSes run on top of the same lv1 hypervisor, they use the same set of hypercalls which has been partially documented http://wiki.ps2dev.org/ps3:hypervisor.


More PlayStation 3 News...

[shummyr]

this is a good tool to have in our arsenal to eventually have custom firmware for homebrew.

[gtxboyracer]

Can someone explain to me in lamen terms the IDA? and how its used? I clicked the external link - but the site itself it abit vague in its detail.

When xorloser mentions about these calls to the Hypervisor, is he just listening a decyptoring; or is there the ability to make/force these calls?

If anyone can answer my questions that would be great.

[PS3 News]

Wikipedia has a dumbed-down explaination of IDA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Disassembler

The Interactive Disassembler, more commonly known as simply IDA, is a commercial disassembler widely used for reverse engineering.

It supports a variety of executable formats for different processors and operating systems.

It also can be used as a debugger for Windows PE, Mac OS X Mach-O, and Linux ELF executables.

Obviously that doesn't help those new to IDA to dissect the PS3 files xorloser's plug-in handles, but (while we don't allow warez on the site) in the past Devs have posted some 'required files' here in the PS3 Dev section.

That being said, below is a link to IDA Pro v5.2.0.908 for those interested in examining it:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SFYQMBOS

http://www.zshare.net/download/60484879e8f4d907/ (Mirror)

[gtxboyracer]

Thanks PS3News for that. Thanks for the links and explanation.

[r3pek]

Does the use of the IDA require a debug/test PS3??

[PS3 News]

The app I linked above is for Windows, so to just open some PS3 files and examine them in it doesn't.

However, if you were planning to do some tinkering and actually testing the changes then ya, a Debug/Test PS3 would probably come in handy.