The C3 hacker conference, this year being 36C3, is set to start in a few hours. The latest in the "Ultimate" talk series covering various older game consoles (and minicomputers that you could play games do your homework on) is set to be featured. In this case it is the turn of the Acorn Archimedes, a somewhat lesser known device these days but Acorn and their tech went on to basically form a little known company called ARM. Still if you fancy yourself a hacker, or wanting to learn, you will doubtless find much of interest in this year's talks. Specifically for modern game consoles (previous years have seen 3ds, Wii, Wii U, Switch and PS3 talks, among several others) there is nothing specific unless one of the lightning talks yields something, though reverse engineering millions of gates is likely to be of some interest to anybody that ever participated in a decapping project, we saw the Switch have a little piece of annoying security called Trustzone so maybe learning how to bypass it is of interest and who in these circles hasn't had a site or tool they liked suffer a takedown.

You can see the schedule on the fahrplan or a list of individual talks on the events page. Do bear in mind that the times are for Germany so adjust accordingly.

The streams of the conference should be up in fairly short order on the Conference's media page and they do also have a youtube channel. There are live options too and you may find your local hackerspace, makerspace or similar having broadcasts of them.

What talks interest you this year?

 

[zoogie]

I just knew you would make this thread, FAST.

Reminder, there be console talks:

3DS - new sploits coming, one of which involves remote hacking the system through Streetpass!
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/events/10796.html
Alexander1970 has a thread here

Playstation - Blue Ray Drive hacks
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/events/10567.html

There might be more but not sure. There's always lightning talks as well, but no idea if any of those will be console stuff.

 

[chrisrlink]

I'm waiting on the ps3/4 talk my dad just put new chip paste on my ps3 gpu/cpu and hasn't overheated yet but still interested

 

[thewannacryguy]

The 3DS one looks very interesting. If the exploit is severe as it seems to be, maybe Nintendo will release another stability update.

 

[DinohScene]

I'll be watching, like every year.

 

[Ericthegreat]

These talks are great when it's about something specific you know about, otherwise they can be a little hard to watch.

 

[FAST6191]

These talks are great when it's about something specific you know about, otherwise they can be a little hard to watch.

While something you have an acquaintance with does make it easier to follow along I usually find most speakers make an effort to have their talk be approachable for generally technically competent people, mainly as such things form one of the main entry points into such fields and it can get kind of lonely when you are out on the edge of something.

I just knew you would make this thread, FAST.

I have done for a few years at this point. I do feel sort of bad that I mainly only note this one and leave defcon, black hat and whatever others still remain (the last few years have seen a few shutter or go private for various reasons).
Thanks for the other suggestions. Seems I missed a few when scanning the lists, probably why I should not make these things at 4am.

 

[veggav]

"I will explain what engineers did right and how achieving code execution on the drive doesn’t lead to full compromise of security"

Got excited and let down in the same sentence.

 

[Reecey]

I watch this every year but I would love to be there participate be part of the crowd and meet the developers I’m sure it would be a fantastic day.

 

[spotanjo3]

Oh, nothing about PS4 huh ? Okay, I will move on. Nothing for me to see.

 

[Valery0p]

The 3DS one looks very interesting. If the exploit is severe as it seems to be, maybe Nintendo will release another stability update.

The exploit chain was already disclosed and patched on 11.2, one year ago.

 

[kublai]

The 3DS one looks very interesting. If the exploit is severe as it seems to be, maybe Nintendo will release another stability update.

Hopefully NIN will release a stable update so that the exploit would work all the time, everytime.

 

[chrisrlink]

The exploit chain was already disclosed and patched on 11.2, one year ago.

this just dashed my hopes on the ps4 BD exploit

 

[raxadian]

A downgrader tool to downgrade the 3DS firnware would be nice.

 

[Valery0p]

A downgrader tool to downgrade the 3DS firnware would be nice.

. . . w h y ?
You can install boot9strap on practically any firmware nowdays...
Besides, various downgrading tools have been existed for a long time, last but not least CTR transfers...

 

[Escorpion]

I hope we get some cool new for Wii U...

 

[thewannacryguy]

Too bad they don't have anything about the Switch. I'd love to see some progress on the Switch Lite. Maybe next year.

 

[raxadian]

. . . w h y ?
You can install boot9strap on practically any firmware nowdays...
Besides, various downgrading tools have been existed for a long time, last but not least CTR transfers...

Because the updates the 3DS got this year caused some slowdowns while using Luma.

And because hacking the 3DS is easier in some firmwares than others.

 

[gohan123]

Because the updates the 3DS got this year caused some slowdowns while using Luma.

And because hacking the 3DS is easier in some firmwares than others.

I thought you can already downgrade?

 

[raxadian]

I thought you can already downgrade?

You can't downgrade recent firmwares I think?