Hacking Computer Science background?

[barioth12]

Hi,

This is my first post, I have been reading the forum for a long time now, but never had a question I couldn't find the answer. But now I have one!

I was wondering what kind of background does one have to work on console hack.

I have a master degree in pure mathematics, so I know my way around a bit of computer science, but I'm not sure how one work on these hack.

Are they doing reverse engineering only?
Do they use assembler language and try to find an exploit?

I know that one has to climb the privilege ladder and this kind of stuff.

I would like to apologize for any grammar mistake as english is not my first language.
Thanks for reading.

 

[FAST6191]

When it comes to ROM hacking/game hacking it has been observed that a computer science background is not always beneficial, and may even be troubling. Computer science is great but they do rather skimp on the reverse engineering and teach you to think in certain ways. Edit. http://www.rumint.org/gregconti/publications/201107_Kobayashi.pdf is a good link that covers part of it, the authors did various presentations referencing it and they spoke of having to get their students to unlearn things they had previously held close to them. In the early days it can often be one with a background in electrical engineering that kicks it off.
Or if you want to come at it another way. What is the arithmetic and knowledge of times tables among you and yours?

As you are in the wii forum I should link up http://hackmii.com/
It covers many things from the hacking of the wii.

Another great work is Hackingthexbox by Andrew Huang, otherwise known as bunnie. It seems to have now gone free to download which is nice
http://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf
Here is his main site
http://www.bunniestudios.com/

I should also link http://web.archive.org/web/20090212...es_Microsoft_Made_in_the_Xbox_Security_System

Different hackers will approach things in different ways depending upon

their skills; look at the 3ds stuff by smea, he will probably be the first person to tell you he is not a fan of soldering. If I am doing myself then you ask me to show a deep knowledge of web development and low level/embedded unix* and I am screwed, ask me to bust out my oscilloscope and a knowledge of ARM assembly and it is game on.

their tools (or the tools of a university/job they might be at, which can be quite impressive)

their desired result: a reliable 9 step softmod that can be pulled off by any 12 year old might not be the end goal of the hack. If I need to know something about the internals of a system and if I have the hardware to do something about it I might sacrifice a unit and do all sorts of things to the hardware to allow me to learn more over a weekend than I might if I spent 200 hours combing through disassembled code.

*a nice example of the combination


By the way defcon, c3, blackhat.... presentations are great things to learn from. https://www.youtube.com/user/ChRiStIaAn008/featured has loads of them.

 

[barioth12]

This is a very complete answer, thanks a lot!

 

[YugamiSekai]

I don't suppose there is a guide on modding in-depth.

 

[ajd4096]

Yes, a CS background helps. I referred to TAOCP earlier this week, it is all still relevant.

 

[XDel]

Learn your terms, get familiar with the material you are working with, follow instructions (assuming they are written correctly) and it's really about as easy as putting Legos together...
...unless you got to bust out a soldering iron, then things might get tricky.

Hi,

This is my first post, I have been reading the forum for a long time now, but never had a question I couldn't find the answer. But now I have one!

I was wondering what kind of background does one have to work on console hack.

I have a master degree in pure mathematics, so I know my way around a bit of computer science, but I'm not sure how one work on these hack.

Are they doing reverse engineering only?
Do they use assembler language and try to find an exploit?

I know that one has to climb the privilege ladder and this kind of stuff.

I would like to apologize for any grammar mistake as english is not my first language.
Thanks for reading.