Hacking Why add anti-piracy measures to Devolution ?

[SifJar]

From the moment he announced it, he was planning on releasing it.

 

[PityOnU]

There are people who have posted here who claim to have hacked the binary blob to work around AP but don't want to publicly release it.

If this is the case and you're not just bullshitting to increase the size of your e-penis, PM me and I will make you an offer you can't refuse. And no I won't release it afterwards because if I had to pay for it then forget everyone else. I just want to play some GCN games on my Wii, damnit.

 

[g4jek8j54]

There are people who have posted here who claim to have hacked the binary blob to work around AP but don't want to publicly release it.

I seriously doubt that any of the people claiming to have cracked it in this thread have really done so...

I just want to play some GCN games on my Wii, damnit.

DIOS MIOS (Lite)

 

[pedrobarca]

Hallo everybody,

here what I found out so far:

Disc Verification:

The disc verification itself is quite simple. devo check, whether the first six byte of iso and disc are equal. If this is true a .dvv file gets created. I managed to verify a "Paper Mario" iso with a "Wind Waker" disc by replacing the first 6 byte of the iso with the first six of the wind waker iso. Devo succesfully verified the disc and created a .dvv.

iso Verification:

But here comes the problem. devo verified my iso, but didn't play it. I think it is like that: devo checks the first six byte of iso and disc. Then it creates the .dvv based on some information from the disc, and possibly some wii information, hdd information and current time. NOT based on the iso itself. So after creating the .dvv it checks the iso whether it is compatible with the created .dvv. And there it fails: the information gathered from the disc is obviously different from the information of the iso.
Interestingly the .dvv I've created with the Paper Mario iso and the Wind Waker disc works perfect with the Wind Waker iso, which is a proof that the creation of the .dvv is totally independent from the iso itself.

So it is impossible to fake generate a .dvv without the proper disc. What options do we have left?

Try to find out the algorithm which generates the .dvv.
Nearly impossible. tueidj made it quite complex and it would be a hell of work to understand the whole source in ppc-assembly.

Try to wipe out the part which checks the dvv files.
Maybe possible. But it is unlikely that tueidj made a simple if(dvv correct) {play iso} statement (setting "dvv correct" to constant true would be all we need). Most likely he does a lot of checks and small changes will make the program abort and return to HBC.

Try to bruteforce the dvv.
Impossible.

Convince tueidj to release a version without AP.
impossible.

So what do we do now?

I disassembled the boot.dol. Did some small things (searched for the string "dvv", which doesnot exist at all in the hole disassembled file, searched for references to usb with no effort). In my opinion, what he cannot hide from us, are the syscalls there has to be syscall which creates a file. This is used only once to create the .dvv. One step would be to to find this certain syscall. I haven't found anything relating that in WiiBrew, so it if someone of you knows please post it here.

 

[tmv_josue]

If the first bytes of the iso are equal of the disc it creates a blank dvv (zeroed), it's nothing interesting. Is necessary that the iso match the disc, at least up to the file system for pass the verification.

 

[pedrobarca]

Maybe an interesting part of the loader.bin:

At the end of that subfunction it has many ways to get to the right code (Maybe when all the verifications fail) and only one way to the left code (Maybe the case, when all the verfication succeeded). The problem with this subfunction is this:

As you can see, it's huge. Basically tueidj is playing around with the registers in this function, which makes it difficult to see what he's intending to do. Maybe some experts in this forum have a opinion to this.

 

[darkseekerliu]

Hello guys this is my first post but I've been following this forum since I bought my wii (March 2013). I live in Brazil and here it is not easy to find an original gamecube game and when you do so they are expensive. For example: Second hand Zelda wind Waker is about US$ 70,00 (http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/...-wind-waker-gamecube-americano-e-original-_JM) . Now that devolution is out with all desired features and working on family wii's, wii u's and bluetooth joysticks, please tueidj, remove the AP thing. I know what you stand for and it is very noble. I really appreciate you hard work. I've googled all around and you are certainly one of the people who most contributed to the wii homebrew scene. I know lot of people will not agree with me, but if you ever read this, please reconsider your position. I'm sorry for asking this again but your software is amazing and like me there are a huge amount of people in Spain, France and other countries around the world that wish to use devolution. Once again: Thank you very much for all your effort on devo and appologies for being an simple guy ... but I found no other way to do it (I am not a programmer not even a cracker or hacker). Please remove the AP.

 

[BIFFTAZ]

I still cannot imagine why he put such a heavy AP on the homebrew

IMO, This picture sums up why he added it... Just for shits & giggles...

 

[LWares87]

Considering the current status of Devolution, I think it's about time that AP support was completely scrapped and replaced with some sort of disclaimer.

 

[lisreal2401]

Yeah, I think he needs to think about the importance of the community that drives the interest in his work. I mean, it's his own work and he can do whatever he wants, but it could be improved so much by just removing the anti piracy. It would be much easier to test games, it would probably generate new interest with it working on the new Wii's, and importantly, it would make his work much more appreciated and used. And lets be honest, I could go buy one thousand dollars worth on Nintendo games right now and that would probably be as much as Nintendo would ever make from people buying GC games solely for Devolution. There really are almost no benefits from keeping it like it is currently, and right now it just seems silly what needs to be done to get games running on new Wii's.

 

[boomario]

I really think we are by ourselves in this thing,
Tuedj will not remove AP, but i also think he will not do anything if we remove, but,
How?

 

[LWares87]

i'm just curious... does the WiiU actually read GameCube discs, especailly by using a loader and having the MIOS and BC wads installed on the vWii?

 

[darkseekerliu]

No, Wiiu does not read gamecube discs. It may be necessary to use an adapter or something previously stated on other thread.

 

[the_randomizer]

I believe the generated .dvv (the disc verification files) can be transferred to the Wii U, not entirely sure how.

 

[emmanu888]

Devo on Wii U works by verifying the disc with a GC compatible Wii. You verify the disc using the Wii, then you can play the game on the Wii U as long as you use the original Wiimote you used during the verification process.

 

[PityOnU]

Maybe an interesting part of the loader.bin:

At the end of that subfunction it has many ways to get to the right code (Maybe when all the verifications fail) and only one way to the left code (Maybe the case, when all the verfication succeeded). The problem with this subfunction is this:

As you can see, it's huge. Basically tueidj is playing around with the registers in this function, which makes it difficult to see what he's intending to do. Maybe some experts in this forum have a opinion to this.

What program did you use to do this?

 

[snikerz]

There are people who have posted here who claim to have hacked the binary blob to work around AP but don't want to publicly release it.

AFAIK there is no hacked binary version, but a DVV generator, which is available to a small group of people (please don't PM me, I don't have it).

The reason why it's not shared is because Devolution is still in active development, a release would lead to one of the following things:

1. tueidj changes the DVV generation and obfuscation algorithms, which would require a lot of effort to RE Devolution again. The author of the DVV generator isn't interested in the Wii scene anymore, so it would probably be an one-time release without any further updates.
2. tueidj abandons Devolution, further patches by someone else are almost impossible because he surely won't open source it.

So when will be the right time to release it? When Devolution is "good enough". Yesterday's release was already a big step in the right direction with WiiU compatibility and support for alternative controllers. But AFAIK you-know-who wants to wait until tueidj includes BBA emulation support for MK DD online gaming.

 

[darkseekerliu]

On the others pages it seems megazig, has got to bypass the verification process.

The DVV generation process probably has already changed once tueidj has added the wiimote support. In the "read me" is said that all games previously verified need to be verified again.

 

[Vahkiti]

Right, so this may be a shot in the dark here, but I have a Wode which, as I'm sure you know is the first modchip able to load GC games over USB prior to Dios Mios. Wode has a workaround for Riivolution by using the Wii's BCA files to fake a security checkout. Could the same not be done for Devolution?

Bear in mind that I have no idea what AP format Devolution uses, just that it requires an original disk in the drive, which under most cases the Wode near flawlessly emulates.

 

[intermet]

Can't we hack the wiimote support ?