Since there are a lot of misconceptions, I wanted to explain what exactly we would get with a boot ROM dump.
What a boot ROM dump itself means:
What SigHax would mean:
What a boot ROM dump itself means:
- It makes SigHax possible (see second list). Even after a boot ROM dump, it will take a few days to a few months before SigHax becomes usable, so these latter points come into play before SigHax.
- It would mean that decrypting NCCH files, cartridge images, and similar things could be done entirely on a PC, without needing a 3DS tool like Decrypt9.
- It would also allow decrypting SD card files and NAND dumps, if you have an OTP dump from that system.
- It would mean that A9LH could be installed without the ctrtransfer step. However, it would not help you dump the OTP. It's basically a 100%-reliable OTPless method.
- It would mean that most information required to emulate a 3DS would be known.
- It would make possible almost perfectly impersonating another 3DS, even development systems. (CTRNAND would still need to be re-encrypted, because the NAND CID is used to generate the key.) Because the private key for movable.sed on development systems is known, you could change the serial number to a fake one.
What SigHax would mean:
- Nintendo would never be able to block the use of a hard mod to hack a system, no matter what they do in a firmware update. (Currently, it's not possible to directly install A9LH with a hard mod unless you already have an OTP dump, so Nintendo could fix the FIRM downgrade hardmod attack.)
- Installing SigHax would also not require a 2.1.0 ctrtransfer downgrade, but SigHax would additionally be able to dump the OTP of systems it is installed on without downgrading to 2.1.0.
- SigHax means that DSiWare attacks could directly install SigHax.
- SigHax might make it possible to boot from SPI Flash instead of NAND. The usefulness of this is unknown, but DS mode has access to SPI.