Announcing RocketLauncher! The first exploit with unlocked Arm7!

UPDATE:
Looks like NoCash found an exploit that is even better then RocketLauncher:

https://problemkaputt.de/gba.htm

He titled it Unlaunch. The exploit works by exploiting a flaw in Stage2 and apparently works on all firmware versions. It requires you run the installer from a DSiWare based hax environment as access to SD/NAND is required. (thus you can't run this from Slot-1 based TWL exploit)

The flaw in stage2 is a buffer overflow involving Launcher's TMD file. If you provide a larger then normal TMD file, it will attempt to load the TMD into ram anyways (this occurs before it does the RSA check) This causes it to overwrite some code in arm9 ram causing arm9 to execute the custom payload. The full details are found in the info menus in the installer.

Note however the installer does not appear to work correctly at the moment. I'd advise you not attempt to install it from the installer. Use the manual install method instead. BUT I'd highly recommend you have a hard mod before attempting manual install. If you have had experience modifying your nand you may be ok doing this. But for safety sake I would just advise against that until the installer works properly.

(this is one reason why RL hasn't been released yet. No proper installer tools are available yet and we don't want people bricking consoles trying to install it)

The release of this exploit may impact our plans regarding RocketLauncher. I'll post more about this once StuckPixel has decided to comment on this.


Important Notice:

Do NOT visit Data Management in DSi System Settings or use the 3DS Transfer tool after installing unlaunch. You WILL brick the console. Wait until HiyaCFW is refined/released properly so that SD redirected version of Launcher can be used or when NoCash decides to implement his own version of the SD redirect patch.








Today I can finally announce a new exploit for the Nintendo DSi. I found this flaw back on May 29th. Almost a year after NoCash initially discovered a oversight by Nintendo involving the DS Cart White list which this exploit takes advantage of (Nintendo forgot to reimplement the RSA checks on it lolz). I was fudging with various things in the white list to try and get a crash. I got system menu to crash by using large values in section 3! So I contacted NoCash and a few other devs about this to investigate it and to see if it's exploitable. Well long story short it was!


Summery of the above video:

1. The exploit requires 1.4.0 firmware! Older or newer fw revisions do not work!
2. The exploit requires a flashcart that you are able to modify the internal rom it presents to the system.
3. Details on which cards will be compatible will be revealed at a later time.
4. The exploit involves a buffer overflow flaw involving section 3 of the white list.
5. This overflow occurs on arm7 thus allowing overwriting memory exclusive to arm7.
6. As a result a large enough overflow will hit the IRQ interrupt handler. This is how we gain code execution.
7. Arm9 was relatively easy to take over. Though data caching presented a minor roadblock while testing on hardware. :P
8. I currently use a modified build of nds-bootloader from WinterMute's github. You know, that portion of hbmenu responsible for booting SRLs. :P
9. Because we already gained arm7 we only had to put arm9 in the correct wait state so that nds-bootloader can do it's thing. :D
10. The exploit in theory can work from the menu once it's running. But we currently make use of the auto boot feature to ensure a stable consistant environment. Tests with a second console suggest that is the case. Note that the exception vector for arm7 seems to either be somewhere else once the menu GUI is running or the overflow hits something else causing arm7 to crash early. Currently we plan to only target exploiting the system with an autoboot rom as it's more predictable.
11. The exact machanics of the arm9 take over and how nds-bootloader is loaded may change. Currently the entire payload fits on the cart. But we may allow reading a payload off SD instead.

Credits to NoCash, Gericom, and Normmatt for help testing/figuring this out. Big credit to StuckPixel who put in most of the coding needed to make this happen. My contribution was finding the flaw and help with testing on hardware.


I will release further details as we finalize this exploit and prepare stuff that will make installing it easier.

Note you will either need a nand mod or a DSiWare based exploit to downgrade your console/install the modified white list needed for this to work. Hopefully we'll have a better solution then simply using fwtool to do this so that may be the factor that determines release date so please be patient!

When things are ready I will update this thread!
 
Last edited by Apache Thunder,

ThisIsDaAccount

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I'm super pumped to see this release!

I'll be adding a button to install Unlaunch for those that are curious about it later this week to my new tool, TempNand. Even then, it seems risky without a hardmod, so I'll be sure to make that warning clear. Thank you to everyone!
 

myanpezi

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@Apache Thunder am I correct in assuming that, since Unlaunch does not seem to be dependent on the whitelist bug, we no longer have a need to downgrade to 1.4?
As nocash said this should work on all versions as long as you have a dsiwarehax app installed. But unless nocash makes this open source or makes some sd redirection + other stuff we'd probably rather have rocketlauncher
 

Patxinco

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This week is starting pretty good in hacking terms!!!
Not gonna try the unlaunch till Apache Thunder says it safe, not gonna risk to have to do a hardmod even having nand backups
 

myanpezi

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This week is starting pretty good in hacking terms!!!
Not gonna try the unlaunch till Apache Thunder says it safe, not gonna risk to have to do a hardmod even having nand backups
you could try it and if it installs successfully you do have a recovery mode (rename fwtool.nds to bootcode.dsi) incase launcher gets deleted (note this will remove the exploit)
 

Billy Acuña

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I'm super pumped to see this release!

I'll be adding a button to install Unlaunch for those that are curious about it later this week to my new tool, TempNand. Even then, it seems risky without a hardmod, so I'll be sure to make that warning clear. Thank you to everyone!
Please, keep in mind that both Launcher's TMD and SRL needs the Read-Only flag onto the NAND, othertwise some sys apps will delete them and then brick.
 
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ThisIsDaAccount

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Please, keep in mind that both Launcher's TMD and SRL needs the Read-Only flag onto the NAND, othertwise some sys apps will delete them and then brick.
Thanks, I didn't know that was necessary. Should I do anything other than just set the files to read only after installing Unlaunch?
 

Billy Acuña

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Thanks, I didn't know that was necessary. Should I do anything other than just set the files to read only after installing Unlaunch?
That is all, even with just setting the TMD with RO flag you make unlaunch brick-proof :)
But of course is recommend to set RO flag to the SRL too because Data Management will always try to delete it and you will need to do NAND restore on boot.
 
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Mnecraft368

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Have a question about unlaunch. If you decided for whatever reason you wanted to launch a dsi rom on boot by using the "bootcode.dsi" file on the root of sd card, what would happen if you renamed a dsi rom to that and tried to boot? Im assuming it would freeze, and I am not trying in case of a brick or something :/
(no I am not asking to play free games, I have an R4)
 

Jhynjhiruu

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Have a question about unlaunch. If you decided for whatever reason you wanted to launch a dsi rom on boot by using the "bootcode.dsi" file on the root of sd card, what would happen if you renamed a dsi rom to that and tried to boot? Im assuming it would freeze, and I am not trying in case of a brick or something :/
(no I am not asking to play free games, I have an R4)
It definitely wouldn't brick. There's a chance it could work, because of the way DSiWare is loaded normally. Try it.
 

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