Project: Resident PS3 Devs Are Seeking a RE Specialist

[CJPC]

A few months back we gave a shout out for a talented coder, and shortly after SamY was welcomed to our PS3 Dev Team!

In recent weeks we have made some significant progress with the PS3 Reference Tool, which will be detailed as time permits in the months to come.

That being said, we are now seeking someone who can help with MIPs Executable (ELF) reversals from decrypted, non-obfuscated file dumps.

A few of the resident PS3 Devs have assisted us with this in the past, but for the near future are unable to devote the time and we would like to keep moving forward at a comfortable pace.

So.. if you have experience in this area, feel free to message me (CJPC) on IRC EFnet, reply to this thread or E-Mail Us.

As soon as you have demonstrated your ability, we will add you as a PS3 Dev here and invite you to our PS3 Dev IRC channel to work directly with us.

PS: Please keep in mind, this progress has nothing at all to do with the Retail PS3 console... nobody (including us) is any closer to unlocking it, and chances are we're all in for a long wait there!


More PlayStation 3 News...

[PS3 News]

FYI I moved this from the PS3 Dev section to the public PS3 Hacks one so that more users can read and reply to it.

As stated above, if anyone is interested, contact CJPC on IRC or E-Mail Us and we will send you a tiny "test" file to reverse and send back to us... privately, of course.

[RexVF5]

Originally Posted by CJPC That being said, we are now seeking someone who can help with MIPs Executable (ELF) reversals from decrypted, non-obfuscated file dumps.

I could maybe aspire to x86 or Java but not this one. However one question here: are you looking for MIPS (as MIPS architecture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture) reverser? I'd expect it would be PowerPC (MIPS is used in PSP whereas PS3's PPU is PowerPC). Or am I missing something?

[kakarotoks]

Hi,
this sounds interesting..
As I gave my 'resume' in the previous thread, I'll just copy/paste some of that info here :

I have very strong C/C++/Tcl/Tk/Java/ASM knowledge.. I've been using Linux for 8 years now and I've always liked to use terminals for everything, so i'm used to command line stuff... I run E17 as a WM, and I usually have around 50+ xterms running constantly.. I must have used a GUI for browsing my files twice in my entire life I'm known in the open source world as KaKaRoTo, I'm the lead developer and project manager of the aMSN Project (http://amsn-project.net - an MSN Messenger clone) for which I've done quite a lot of stuff, mainly reverse engineering both the protocols and disassembled code. Amongst other things, I wrote the libsiren library (SIREN audio codec).. it was an ASM to C reverse engineering of Microsoft's proprietary audio codec. I work for Collabora (Open Source centric company), so I've been working with gstreamer, farsight and telepathy, and I'm the maintainer of libnice (first open source library implementing the ICE specifications) which is a NAT traversal library (GUADEC talk slides : http://people.collabora.co.uk/~kakaroto/libnice-talk-gcds2009.pdf ). Pretty much all my code is open source and available if you know how to use google... [...] Oh, I graduated from Polytechnique Montreal as a Software Engineer... I think that's pretty much it

So yeah, I've worked on many things, lots of reverse engineering (protocols, raw data, etc..), as well as ASM to C RE. I'm used to read ASM (x86) code without problems, I've also had to do some RE for ARM processors (RE-ed and wrote the first code ever to access the microphone on the iPhone on the very first firmware, but it was closed sourced by the contractor).
I also wrote something along the lines of oSpy in a previous job (closed source too), and then contributed some stuff to oSpy itself (http://code.google.com/p/ospy)..

Never done MIPs, but the transition probably won't be very hard (just like when I did ARM RE for the first time, it took an hour or two to get used to the new calling conventions and instruction set).

I'm not sure how much time I can spend on this, but I'm interested in the project, I can probably help you out a little. Send me that test file, I'll try to RE it and see if I can do it and how hard I find it.. also tell me how much time you're expecting me to have available for you, so I can tell you whether or not I can take on that task.

Thanks,
KaKaRoTo

[PS3 News]

Originally Posted by RexVF5 However one question here: are you looking for MIPS (as MIPS architecture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture) reverser?

CJPC passed out for the night, but he will clarify it for ya tomorrow.

Originally Posted by kakarotoks Send me that test file, I'll try to RE it and see if I can do it and how hard I find it.. also tell me how much time you're expecting me to have available for you, so I can tell you whether or not I can take on that task.

OK, I sent a relatively harmless test file to you via your registration e-mail... just be sure to send it back to my e-mail and not post it here of course.

There is no rush to get it done/back to us as the news post was actually prepared from last week so it's already dated.

Since then, CJ was actually able to work with someone (who may join the Dev Team) and ended up getting done what he needed to... however, the reason we decided to roll with the news post anyway is because (as he mentioned) things come up in people's lives and so those who can RE may not always be available, meaning it can't hurt to have a few reliable people to help out.

[kakarotoks]

Originally Posted by PS3 News OK, I sent a relatively harmless test file to you via your registration e-mail... just be sure to send it back to my e-mail and not post it here of course. There is no rush to get it done/back to us as the news post was actually prepared from last week so it's already dated. Since then, CJ was actually able to work with someone (who may join the Dev Team) and ended up getting done what he needed to... however, the reason we decided to roll with the news post anyway is because (as he mentioned) things come up in people's lives and so those who can RE may not always be available, meaning it can't hurt to have a few reliable people to help out.

Cool, thanks, I got the file and sent you something in return in your email.. but I sent it from a different email than the one I received it from (I updated my profile here to my new email). So make sure you don't miss it (subject is very helpful).
I'll try to do some more RE tomorrow to finish it off, I didn't expect the file to be a full application like that.

Thanks again!
KaKaRoTo

[PS3 News]

Got it- Thanks kakarotoks! I will forward it to CJPC so that at least he's on the same page as we are with what you've done and what you plan to do, etc.

And ya, believe it or not that test file is the very least 'interesting' one he could find to offer so when CJPC does begin the PS3 Dev updates I'm sure many who can actually comprehend what's going on will be quite excited with what they've done with the TOOL so far.

[RexVF5]

Originally Posted by PS3 News OK, I sent a relatively harmless test file to you via your registration e-mail... just be sure to send it back to my e-mail and not post it here of course.

Would you be willing to send it to me as well? I will have a look at it in IDA and see what comes out of it...

[PS3 News]

Originally Posted by RexVF5 Would you be willing to send it to me as well? I will have a look at it in IDA and see what comes out of it...

Sure.. you've got mail.

If anyone else is proficient in RE'ing and would like to take a peek at it just reply and I will send it to ya later today... or message CJPC on IRC directly.

[Neo Cyrus]

Originally Posted by CJPC PS: Please keep in mind, this progress has nothing at all to do with the Retail PS3 console... nobody (including us) is any closer to unlocking it, and chances are we're all in for a long wait there!

Any progress is better than no progress! Best of luck!