PSP : Hackers add Web, chat to it!

Hello!

Following up Irongeek’s thread here about “Mobile Hacking with a Gameboy DS/Sony PSP” - http://www.antionline.com/showthread...&highlight=PSP

Here is the latest update about gaming handheld used as tool for exploring more online capabilities.

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Source – CNN Technology News - http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.gam...eut/index.html
Hackers add Web, chat to PSP
Tuesday, April 5, 2005 Posted: 4:42 PM EDT (2042 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Sony Corp.'s new PlayStation Portable is turning into a great tool for Web browsing, comics reading and online chat -- and it also happens to play video games, movies and music, if you prefer that sort of thing.
The $249 PSP handheld video game player went on sale in the United States on March 24, and it took very little time before techies added the kinds of functions to the PSP that Sony did not include -- and may never have intended. One man needed only 24 hours to get a working client for Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, an older messaging platform.
"I was on IRC, and someone mentioned how cool it would be to use their PSP on Wi-Fi at Starbucks to talk to people over IRC. I said, 'I can do that', so I began working on it immediately," said Robert Balousek, creator of PSPIRC (http://www.pspirc.com ), in an email interview.
A number of people have already set up such portals, formatted to fit in the PSP's screen and offering links and a place to enter Web addresses. The technology blog Engadget has rounded up a number of those links.

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- PlayStation Portable in one CooL wireless gaming device turned into wireless Browser and Chat device. What’s next? It will become a tool for exploring more things (naughty things). And it’s wireless! Is it possible to connect a portable keyboard as well on this gadget? Like those of Nokia’s mobile and Pocket PC’s? And one last thing, about wireless security on this gadget, how it will then be handled? Just a thought… :D

Yo!

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And one last thing, about wireless security on this gadget, how it will then be handled?

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Good point, how will any security be handled? I can hardly see security software vendors spending development resource on something that has been modified way beyond its intended use.

Seems to me that they are just creating a new malware vector, and an unprotected one at that?

ahhh I can see it now...you are sitting there playing your favorite game and BLAM! a nice pop up.

Most of the comments I had found on the old thread by Irongeek seems the posters don't believe it yet that Hackers could do wonders! Well, I guessed it always fall to the idea that "IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF POSSIBILITY, BUT ONLY A MATTER OF TIME".

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ahhh I can see it now...you are sitting there playing your favorite game and BLAM! a nice pop up.

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- I almost throw my gaming gear when it hangs, WTF, POPUP? you'll see it in the Recycle bin (LoLz!).

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Seems to me that they are just creating a new malware vector, and an unprotected one at that?

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- Well, here comes the AV for gaming gear (smell it?) ;) :eek: :rolleyes:

Yo!

http://www.psp-linux.org/

http//www.dslinux.org/

there are no firewalls, but the Nintendo DS has a clever mechanism to allow communications to start with it, although someone has managed to spoof this and trick the DS into communications however it doesnt work full yet and you need to have a certain chip type in your wifi card as well

the Psp will probably suceed in security to some extend because of sony's insistance with using only sony products with sony products, however there appears to be no firewall, but it seems as if all ports that arent needed are looked down and the code seems well tested, becuase its taking the people involved with hacking these 2 consoles ages, for instance the XBOX was hacked within 2 - 4weeks of its realease, so theres an alrite comparision

i2c

What would I have to do to learn enough about Linux to get into a development effort like that? I know the basics of Linux, intermediate C++, along with a menagerie of other skills, and more about Windows than 99% of the population. There are alot of things like that I'd like to be involved in, but I don't know enough about Linux I suppose....

Are there any Linux kernels that are just starting...something I could follow in a forum, or brand new Linux distros I can follow? I'm learning quite a bit by being able to see this thing from the ground up.

A_T

There doesnt appear to be a great deal of linux work to do for the DS at least as a linux port to the GBA was done, and DS linux has just diff'd the files and theres not a great deal of variation between the true ucLinux and Gba linux, so there shouldnt need to be a great deal of effort to port linux to the DS - after all it was designed so that It could be ported.

The problem at present is coding is having to be run though a device called a "passme" this effectivly allows the encryption routines that are required to autheticate the game cart as "really" - its not so much a problem, but your gonna need to learn some fundemental electronic assembly (PM me if you like) to be able to construct a passme,

If I were you, I might be wrong and some may disagree, but drop the C++ and go to C for kernel hacking.

Try the LFS (linux from scratch) project for starters, I got bored of it 36hrs into (damn my intollerance for not sitting still) but I was almost there to building my own "distro".

Search google for "linux kernel hacking" and thres also a HOWTO (why not 2 words!) in the LDP on kernel hacking, however im unsure whether its fully finished?

when you say the linux kernel, thats a bit false because its not really the kernel that is changed (its hacked to make it work on different things, but never written from the ground up each time theres a new project in the wings).

Game consoles are interesting things to port code to becuase of there security mechanisms, im not really interested in the slightest in making linux run on things, im more interested in how the security is defeated.

Im still slightly fustrated that the DS came out this time of year when I have the most work and the least money, so the challenge will be done when i want to attack it with my soldering iron and newly designed FPGA board (ok so I wasted shed loads of time designing this when I was supposed to be revising but I justified it to myself becuase I was supposed to be revising embedded systems)

(PM me if youd like info on build a passme, I havent built one but i know enough about electronics to guide you :))

i2c

Actually, I'm part of psp-linux.org now. I've just been learning MIPS assembly, though I can't find a Windows-hosted cross-compiler for it....(linux doesn't like my wi-fi card, a DWL-G630)

I've been ripping apart the bootstrap/OS package and disassembling it as Intel metapc....so I see nothing but the plaintext. But it has shown that there is an encrytion routine for most of the code.

But I suppose I should start learning C. Why is most of the Linux stuff in C as opposed to C++?


A_T