Post: KaKaRoTo LEAVES A PRESENT FOR THE SCENE AS HE OFFICIALLY RETIRES
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12-30-2014, 06:31 PM
#1
SonyBlack
League Champion
Originally posted by another user
This guy is Amazing..
PS3 developer KaKaRoTo has released his farewell gift to the PS3 Community. As he promised recently he had a big release for the PS3 community, but with the release he also Officially announced his retirement from the PS3 Community. The developer a few years ago was working on a HEN (Homebrew Enabler) for OFW user's and the project made some advancements, but also contained some roadblocks that have proved to be a giant obstacle in the Scene. The developer asked the community back in March of 2012, if he should release this partially completed HEN with the majority saying no, until the project was finished. Hoping for some advancements in the scene the developer held on to his partially completed work.
Well the developer has waited 3 years and he decided now is the time to release his works, as in it's current form and the tools developed, do have some value for the community, The developer has released some new information for developers and also some new tools, the highlight being a tool he created called Ps3xport. This tool is used to manipulating the PS3 backup data (from System Settings >Backup Utility) on your XMB. The benefit in this is that it will give complete control over /dev_hdd0 and /dev_flash2 filesystems, even on 4.66 OFW, BUT the problem with OFW systems there is the roadblock that does not allow you to RUN homebrew due to the NPDRM ECDSA protections that was not solved back then and still an issue today for OFW user's.
However this information and tools are great to see and can perhaps progress in other ways and with other projects.. So take a look at all the information from developer KaKaRoTo about these information.
A huge thanks to developer KakaRoTo. Who has done many amazing things in the PS3 Homebrew Community, just to name a few highlights of many with the Open Source Jailbreaks in the 3.41 days, One of the first to create a CFW, Creator of the original MFW Tool, Homebrew Games such as Eskiss, Homebrew Apps such as Elegantz and a ton of other accomplishments from this dev including everything you read below. Thanks for all the good times KaKaRoTo. you will always be a respected developer in this community. I hope your hard work and research leads to good things and perhaps some new projects down the road.
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Originally posted by another user
Hello everyone!
It's been quite a long time and I'm very happy about that :p
Let's do the boring part first! This is my final release for the scene, I am not "coming back" or anything like that, so don't get your hopes up, but I needed to release this so I'd be officially done. I have never actually announced that I'm leaving the scene but everyone figured it out. It wasn't originally done intentionally actually, but life caught up with me, work, family, lack of time, etc.. so I had little time to work on the ps3. Also, my motivation was mostly gone due to not finding anything interesting anymore, a lot of drama and I'm not a huge fan of all the attention this all brings. I got into the scene because I was curious and I wanted to learn, and I have to say I've learned a lot of things these past years and it was an incredible journey, but as I had lack of time and started breathing, I realized that I've had enough of it so I left and I am very happy with that decision because you have absolutely no idea how much of a time drain and headache this was :p
Anyways, there was one thing I did just before I left, but I never got to release it, but today is your lucky day as it's release O'clock where I am!. This release is a way to say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, etc.. to everyone, and a way for me to also say "I'm done for good, I don't have anything left for you in a drawer somewhere"
. I've wanted to release this for a while now, and I even made a poll on You must login or register to view this content. back in March 2012 asking people if I should (looks like ps3hax is down right now so You must login or register to view this content.) and the general response was not to release it until it can be useful (when an npdrm workaround is found) with some people saying to release if nothing new happens in the scene.. and I think I've waited long enough now to know nothing new on that front will happen.
So.. since I've announced the release, I've seen a lot of speculation about what it is and what it could be.. a lot of people seem to think (or mostly, want/hope for) a downgrade method, unfortunately that's not the case. I've seen some ridiculous suggestions too, like someone asking if it's a way to run PS4 and Xbox One games on PS3.. I'm sorry to say, that's not it either :p As I've said in a tweet shortly after, this is nothing groundbreaking, this is code that hasn't been touched in 3 years, so it's already 3 years old, but I think it's still something that can be very useful to the community.
So here it is, I'm introducing to you : PS3xport! I've uploaded it to my github account here : You must login or register to view this content.
What does it do? Well, it's basically a tool for manipulating the PS3 backup data. When I say "PS3 backup", I'm not talking about a "backup" of a game, no.. I'm talking about the full PS3 hard drive backup that you can do by going to "System Settings->Backup Utility" on your XMB. That creates an encrypted directory on your FAT32 hard drive which allows you to format your PS3 and then Restore it just like it was before. I've reverse engineered the file format and encryption and PS3xport allows you to create new backup data from scratch, or dump existing ones, or delete specific files from a backup or do a whole lot of other things to your backup folders. This gives you total control over your /dev_hdd0 and /dev_flash2 filesystems, which will let you install homebrew on any console, even if it's the latest OFW version. Unfortunately, just like it was 3 years ago, you wouldn't be able to run those homebrew apps you install due to the NPDRM ECDSA signature missing. If you have your IDPS though for example, it could let you restore a backup from one PS3 to another PS3 without losing any of your data in the transfer.
So.. what's this about "your IDPS"? yes, the backup has two sets of files, some can be decrypted right away and some can't because they are encrypted with your IDPS (your unique ps3 device id) which is why they can't be restored on a different ps3. If you have a CFW, you can easily get your IDPS (I've written a small tool to do that, released on You must login or register to view this content., but apparently MM and Webman will also give you that information) and that will give you total control over your backup data as you would be able to decrypt and reencrypt it. If you have OFW and can't get your IDPS, then you will not be able to dump/decode all the files from your backup, but you will still be able to create a backup that can be restored on your PS3 with no limitations (this means for example that you can restore a backup from a CFW into an OFW without any issues). I was told however that someone can get IDPS from OFW consoles and in light of this release, they might release their method soon, I can't say more than that though, but be patient and good things come to those who wait
So my release is in two parts. First, the documentation of the file format was added to the You must login or register to view this content. so any developer can understand how the backup archive files are created and can create their own tools. Reverse engineering that format took months of work and I won't go into too much details about what had to be done to figure out the format but it was an incredibly long and difficult task to do that I had a lot of fun in doing. The second part of the release is of course the release of the You must login or register to view this content. tool. The tool is quite powerful and you can do a lot of things with it, but it's a command line only tool and I honestly just tested it on Linux, it's not really my job at this point to make a windows build, or make a GUI around it, etc.. but I'm sure it won't be long before others in the scene pick it up and make a nice GUI for it and release windows binaries. I've written a nice README file so everyone can understand how the tool works and what it can do. I remember though that 3 years ago just before I stopped working on it, I wanted to add a "AddPKG" command to it which would just ‘install' a pkg into the backup data automatically, unfortunately, I never got to do it, but it should be easy to do. While I'm at it, I'm also releasing a You must login or register to view this content. which I found in an old directory (cool thing is the -p option in it, try it…
as well which is a PKG extraction tool that uses the PagedFile mechanism (see below) to allow for very fast pkg file access with very little memory usage even for huge pkg files, any dev can probably mix those two together to add the AddPKG feature to ps3xport.
On the software front, ps3xport.c will parse the commands then use the archive_* API which is in archive.c. That will contain all the functions needed to manipulate the archive files. It uses a ChainedList which is my rudimentary implementation of a GList-like ordered list and the archive API also uses PagedFile objects which are pretty cool. PagedFiles are a wrapper around a file which allows you to read/write to a file using pages (I set it to 64KB per page I think) so it limits the hard drive access. The cool thing about it is that it has encryption and hashing built in, so you can just set the encryption key or ask for the file to be hashed, and whenever you read/write, the encryption will be done transparently, and the coolest thing about it is that you can actually seek in the encrypted file and it will still work (it recalculates the required IV whenever you seek). The encryption there works on the stream, so you don't need to write blocks of 16 bytes every time (thanks to the paging of the data) and it has a cool ‘splice' method which allows you to copy data from one PagedFile to another easily, so you could in theory re-encrypt a file using a different key using 5 function calls (open *2, set_key*2, splice).
That's about it.
I'm really happy about this release, and I want to say Happy New Year to everyone, and of course..
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
It's been quite a long time and I'm very happy about that :p
Let's do the boring part first! This is my final release for the scene, I am not "coming back" or anything like that, so don't get your hopes up, but I needed to release this so I'd be officially done. I have never actually announced that I'm leaving the scene but everyone figured it out. It wasn't originally done intentionally actually, but life caught up with me, work, family, lack of time, etc.. so I had little time to work on the ps3. Also, my motivation was mostly gone due to not finding anything interesting anymore, a lot of drama and I'm not a huge fan of all the attention this all brings. I got into the scene because I was curious and I wanted to learn, and I have to say I've learned a lot of things these past years and it was an incredible journey, but as I had lack of time and started breathing, I realized that I've had enough of it so I left and I am very happy with that decision because you have absolutely no idea how much of a time drain and headache this was :p
Anyways, there was one thing I did just before I left, but I never got to release it, but today is your lucky day as it's release O'clock where I am!. This release is a way to say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, etc.. to everyone, and a way for me to also say "I'm done for good, I don't have anything left for you in a drawer somewhere"
. I've wanted to release this for a while now, and I even made a poll on You must login or register to view this content. back in March 2012 asking people if I should (looks like ps3hax is down right now so You must login or register to view this content.) and the general response was not to release it until it can be useful (when an npdrm workaround is found) with some people saying to release if nothing new happens in the scene.. and I think I've waited long enough now to know nothing new on that front will happen.So.. since I've announced the release, I've seen a lot of speculation about what it is and what it could be.. a lot of people seem to think (or mostly, want/hope for) a downgrade method, unfortunately that's not the case. I've seen some ridiculous suggestions too, like someone asking if it's a way to run PS4 and Xbox One games on PS3.. I'm sorry to say, that's not it either :p As I've said in a tweet shortly after, this is nothing groundbreaking, this is code that hasn't been touched in 3 years, so it's already 3 years old, but I think it's still something that can be very useful to the community.
So here it is, I'm introducing to you : PS3xport! I've uploaded it to my github account here : You must login or register to view this content.
What does it do? Well, it's basically a tool for manipulating the PS3 backup data. When I say "PS3 backup", I'm not talking about a "backup" of a game, no.. I'm talking about the full PS3 hard drive backup that you can do by going to "System Settings->Backup Utility" on your XMB. That creates an encrypted directory on your FAT32 hard drive which allows you to format your PS3 and then Restore it just like it was before. I've reverse engineered the file format and encryption and PS3xport allows you to create new backup data from scratch, or dump existing ones, or delete specific files from a backup or do a whole lot of other things to your backup folders. This gives you total control over your /dev_hdd0 and /dev_flash2 filesystems, which will let you install homebrew on any console, even if it's the latest OFW version. Unfortunately, just like it was 3 years ago, you wouldn't be able to run those homebrew apps you install due to the NPDRM ECDSA signature missing. If you have your IDPS though for example, it could let you restore a backup from one PS3 to another PS3 without losing any of your data in the transfer.
So.. what's this about "your IDPS"? yes, the backup has two sets of files, some can be decrypted right away and some can't because they are encrypted with your IDPS (your unique ps3 device id) which is why they can't be restored on a different ps3. If you have a CFW, you can easily get your IDPS (I've written a small tool to do that, released on You must login or register to view this content., but apparently MM and Webman will also give you that information) and that will give you total control over your backup data as you would be able to decrypt and reencrypt it. If you have OFW and can't get your IDPS, then you will not be able to dump/decode all the files from your backup, but you will still be able to create a backup that can be restored on your PS3 with no limitations (this means for example that you can restore a backup from a CFW into an OFW without any issues). I was told however that someone can get IDPS from OFW consoles and in light of this release, they might release their method soon, I can't say more than that though, but be patient and good things come to those who wait
So my release is in two parts. First, the documentation of the file format was added to the You must login or register to view this content. so any developer can understand how the backup archive files are created and can create their own tools. Reverse engineering that format took months of work and I won't go into too much details about what had to be done to figure out the format but it was an incredibly long and difficult task to do that I had a lot of fun in doing. The second part of the release is of course the release of the You must login or register to view this content. tool. The tool is quite powerful and you can do a lot of things with it, but it's a command line only tool and I honestly just tested it on Linux, it's not really my job at this point to make a windows build, or make a GUI around it, etc.. but I'm sure it won't be long before others in the scene pick it up and make a nice GUI for it and release windows binaries. I've written a nice README file so everyone can understand how the tool works and what it can do. I remember though that 3 years ago just before I stopped working on it, I wanted to add a "AddPKG" command to it which would just ‘install' a pkg into the backup data automatically, unfortunately, I never got to do it, but it should be easy to do. While I'm at it, I'm also releasing a You must login or register to view this content. which I found in an old directory (cool thing is the -p option in it, try it…
as well which is a PKG extraction tool that uses the PagedFile mechanism (see below) to allow for very fast pkg file access with very little memory usage even for huge pkg files, any dev can probably mix those two together to add the AddPKG feature to ps3xport.On the software front, ps3xport.c will parse the commands then use the archive_* API which is in archive.c. That will contain all the functions needed to manipulate the archive files. It uses a ChainedList which is my rudimentary implementation of a GList-like ordered list and the archive API also uses PagedFile objects which are pretty cool. PagedFiles are a wrapper around a file which allows you to read/write to a file using pages (I set it to 64KB per page I think) so it limits the hard drive access. The cool thing about it is that it has encryption and hashing built in, so you can just set the encryption key or ask for the file to be hashed, and whenever you read/write, the encryption will be done transparently, and the coolest thing about it is that you can actually seek in the encrypted file and it will still work (it recalculates the required IV whenever you seek). The encryption there works on the stream, so you don't need to write blocks of 16 bytes every time (thanks to the paging of the data) and it has a cool ‘splice' method which allows you to copy data from one PagedFile to another easily, so you could in theory re-encrypt a file using a different key using 5 function calls (open *2, set_key*2, splice).
That's about it.
I'm really happy about this release, and I want to say Happy New Year to everyone, and of course..
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Source: You must login or register to view this content.
Last edited by
SonyBlack ; 12-30-2014 at 06:35 PM.
The following 34 users say thank you to SonyBlack for this useful post:
Eddie Mac, gaming_nation, Geo, HiddenHour, hkownz, ImIrIsH, Island Time, Jimmy, Joel, justeve, KINGMANI, LaughTracks, M0T1VAT10N, MilkShakeModz, milky4444, Mr Grumpy, John, RambosNGU, ResistTheJamsha, ResistTheSun, Reyz, Scotty4.11, smashedya, SnaY, Synergy, Tipton_Modz, Ciri, Turk_Warrior, vAerox9, worrorfight, x5150xiZombie, zshred
The following user groaned SonyBlack for this awful post:
01-04-2015, 07:20 AM
#56
Red-EyeX32
AstroCFG
01-04-2015, 07:47 AM
#57
Chaos
Who’s Jim Erased?
Originally posted by EyeX32
Um no it's not...
I really don't give a fuck 🚬🔫 to be honest if does or don't cause I got a cfw only system I play but my ofw got banned back when I data transferred mods to bo1 and mw2 but the ps3 is already fucked and yes it will happen one day I guarantee it and I am not to deep into modding like no everything about devolping shit but I basically know everything else except hardcore coding.
Last edited by
Chaos ; 01-04-2015 at 07:50 AM.
01-04-2015, 08:08 AM
#59
Red-EyeX32
AstroCFG
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