Hacking Any open-source community-developed PowerSaves software available?

[flarn2006]

Apparently due to legal pressure from Nintendo, Datel was forced to remove the codes for Diancie, Hoopa, and Volcanion, as well as the Lati@site items, in Pokemon X/Y, from PowerSaves in an update. While I've seen workarounds involving Cheat Engine, I think a better option would be to reverse-engineer the software and develop our own, preferably that lets you edit the raw save data with tools like Pokegen, in the case of the Pokemon games.

Has anyone developed any such software? Are there any plans to? Considering reverse-engineering and game hacking is basically Datel's business, how likely do you think they would be to cooperate with the community for this purpose by providing technical documentation? (Not that I think it would be impossible without it, but it would certainly help.) Knowing Datel and what they do, they probably only removed the codes to cover their asses, rather than any real desire to protect Nintendo's brand interests.

(Keep in mind I do not own a PowerSaves, though I may buy one at some point.)

 

[gamesquest1]

Power saves uses hacked 3ds's for decrypting and encrypting saves, there is no way for people to do this themselves

 

[flarn2006]

Power saves uses hacked 3ds's for decrypting and encrypting saves, there is no way for people to do this themselves

I don't think it requires a hacked 3DS to work. If that's not what you mean, do you mind elaborating?

EDIT: Oh, do you mean it uses a hacked 3DS owned by Datel to encrypt/decrypt the saves? If so, why can't they just get the private key from the hacked 3DS (if they hacked it to decrypt/encrypt saves on demand, this doesn't seem too out of their league) and put that in the software? And a third-party program could still work; it would just connect to the same server. If the Cheat Engine workaround is possible, the actual save data is still put together clientside, so it should still work.

EDIT2: Oops; you replied while I was editing my post!

 

[gamesquest1]

It's been explained over and over in the power saves thread, basically the 3ds uses a very good encryption method, there is no feasible way for people to do this without using a 3ds, so it's most likely datel are using a bunch of hacked 3ds's to decrypt saves then they apply changes and feed them back through a 3ds to have them encrypted correctly, this is all automated of course

 

[flarn2006]

Please see my edit; reposting here so it shows up as a reply for you.

 

[gamesquest1]

Please see my edit; reposting here so it shows up as a reply for you.

The cheat engine method only worked for a few hours, it only worked because datel has a database of code, the power saves program just downloads a list of codes available for your game......each code has a Index number, when they removed the diancie codes, they only removed them from the code list, but not from the database of code, cheat engine just changed the index from one code to the index number of the other codes that where no longer listed, so people could still apply codes that where not available .......this was still done server side

 

[flarn2006]

The cheat engine method only worked for a few hours, it only worked because datel has a database of code, the power saves program just downloads a list of codes available for your game......each code has a Index number, when they removed the diancie codes, they only removed them from the code list, but not from the database of code, cheat engine just changed the index from one code to the index number of the other codes that where no longer listed, so people could still apply codes that where not available .......this was still done server side

Oh okay. That's a shame.
What are they worried will happen if they allow custom save editing? People using the unreleased Pokemon and then them getting sued? If they don't specifically provide that as an option but leave people to do it themselves, AFAIK (I'm not a lawyer) they wouldn't be responsible for it.

Still wondering why they can't simply extract the private key and do everything clientside; it would save them a lot of resources I would imagine.

 

[gamesquest1]

Oh okay. That's a shame.
What are they worried will happen if they allow custom save editing? People using the unreleased Pokemon and then them getting sued? If they don't specifically provide that as an option but leave people to do it themselves, AFAIK (I'm not a lawyer) they wouldn't be responsible for it.

Still wondering why they can't simply extract the private key and do everything clientside; it would save them a lot of resources I would imagine.

2 possible reasons
A) there is no way of extracting the private key, it is never transferred anywhere and there is no way of forcing it to dump
B) they don't want to as if it was all done client side there would be Chinese rip-offs within a week, the only thing special about the power saves device is that they can edit the saves, if they allowed people to do that on their own PC.......nothing really making anyone need the power saves device

 

[flarn2006]

2 possible reasons
A) there is no way of extracting the private key, it is never transferred anywhere and there is no way of forcing it to dump
B) they don't want to as if it was all done client side there would be Chinese rip-offs within a week, the only thing special about the power saves device is that they can edit the saves, if they allowed people to do that on their own PC.......nothing really making anyone need the power saves device

They would still need the device because PC's don't have 3DS cartridge ports.

 

[Arras]

Oh okay. That's a shame.
What are they worried will happen if they allow custom save editing? People using the unreleased Pokemon and then them getting sued? If they don't specifically provide that as an option but leave people to do it themselves, AFAIK (I'm not a lawyer) they wouldn't be responsible for it.

Still wondering why they can't simply extract the private key and do everything clientside; it would save them a lot of resources I would imagine.

You can't just extract a key. The 3DS has a hardware unit that you feed encrypted saves into and you get decrypted saves back and vice versa, without you getting to see what it does.

 

[Qtis]

They would still need the device because PC's don't have 3DS cartridge ports.

The price would still be key. The hardware is dirt cheap if you don't need much added, since you have the PC hardware there. Basically just a 3DS cart port and a host device for the PC (USB?)

 

[flarn2006]

You can't just extract a key. The 3DS has a hardware unit that you feed encrypted saves into and you get decrypted saves back and vice versa, without you getting to see what it does.

Datel has a video on their site that shows their reverse engineering lab; they have equipment for decapping and reverse engineering chips.

 

[gamesquest1]

Datel has a video on their site that shows their reverse engineering lab; they have equipment for decapping and reverse engineering chips.

2 possible reasons
A) there is no way of extracting the private key, it is never transferred anywhere and there is no way of forcing it to dump
B) they don't want to as if it was all done client side there would be Chinese rip-offs within a week, the only thing special about the power saves device is that they can edit the saves, if they allowed people to do that on their own PC.......nothing really making anyone need the power saves device

Even if they have the key.......if it was just built into the software it would be a few weeks before R4 save master deluxe edition appears and just ripped they key out of the software..........datel wants to guarantee they get as much profit on the work they put into it regardless

 

[flarn2006]

Even if they have the key.......if it was just built into the software it would be a few weeks before R4 save master deluxe edition appears and just ripped they key out of the software..........datel wants to guarantee they get as much profit on the work they put into it regardless

Hey, what happened to that fundraiser for decapping the 3DS' chips? If we did that, couldn't we, at least in theory, get all the private keys used by the 3DS? Well, all the ones embedded in the 3DS that is. Like for decrypting games (has uses outside of piracy, such as finding stuff like unreleased Pokemon, and making mods that can run on a Gateway or something) or encrypting/decrypting saves. If it's funded by the hacking community rather than a company looking to make a profit, all the findings could just be released to the community, right?

Last I heard was that the fundraiser was suspended because they were waiting for someone to respond to an email but they were away or something, but that was almost six months ago.