Hacking [WIP] KARL3DS - Kernel access on N3DS via Ninjhax + Loadcode

[Rob Blou]

btw guys my post about legit cartridge to cia was not a request .. I was just thinking about it and thought it was a good idea so I shared it .... I didn't think about sky3ds users or renting games to pirate them cause that's not the way I think but now I understand why it would be a bad idea. That being said, I seem to have pissed off a dev on the first post I made in this thread thinking I was just sharing ideas so I guess I'll just shut up. Piracy is bad .. end of the debate.

 

[SLiV3R]

I'm not interested all those emunand stuff. Just want region free and sound in hb on my n3ds

 

[Relys]

Absolutely perfect post!!!
You just forgot a little thing to say: "if you don't agree with devs point of view, then DO IT YOURSELF, no one will stop you".

Now a technical question: Do you guys think that could be possible to have some kind of debug that will log handled and unhandled crashes of the browser? Maybe this could help for looking into a webkit browser exploit in the N3DS, or am I totally wrong?
Thank you.

Now that we have kernel access we can absolutely set up exception handlers to debug WebKit crashes. In fact that is exactly what we are going to do on the WiiU to get new browser entry point.

 

[night_hawk]

Now that we have kernel access we can absolutely set up exception handlers to debug WebKit crashes. In fact that is exactly what we are going to do on the WiiU to get new browser entry point.

Yes i read the Wii U discussion, so my question was referring exactly to that. Thank you

 

[Hashtastrophe]

...of signed homebrew channel...

Neat, I was hoping for this. How is the signing going to work?

Spoiler

I'm not too familiar with the 3DS but I'm guessing that you're having the system use a second (set of) key(s) to validate (your self signed) homebrew launcher, right? Or are you sort of breaking codesigning so that it's still mandatory to execute stuff but the system will accept any signature? (eg. how jailbreaks on apple devices typically work. All signed code is checked to see if legit but amfid is tricked into always returning a success, unsigned code still isn't executed at all. Usually with the exception of the untether payload.)

 

[WulfyStylez]

Neat, I was hoping for this. How is the signing going to work?

Spoiler

I'm not too familiar with the 3DS but I'm guessing that you're having the system use a second (set of) key(s) to validate (your self signed) homebrew launcher, right? Or are you sort of breaking codesigning so that it's still mandatory to execute stuff but the system will accept any signature? (eg. how jailbreaks on apple devices typically work. All signed code is checked to see if legit but amfid is tricked into always returning a success, unsigned code still isn't executed at all. Usually with the exception of the untether payload.)

That's a rather specific implementation detail that we don't really wanna disclose.

 

[marksteele]

Guys the argument of being able to "backup your carts" honestly died last generation. If you want all your games stored on your SD card then buy them from the eshop. I don't care if some obscure games aren't available to purchase in that format or if you already own a billion carts. Game "backups" are just flat out something that we're just not interested in supporting and we are certainly not going to go out of our way to develop some crazy method of trying to "authenticate" that you actually purchased the cart. Why you may ask? Because we don't care enough about that feature for our own personal use to develop it. At the end of the day this project is about developing things we want to use. Why you may ask? Because nobody is paying us to develop things we could care less about. There is also not ETA for release. Why you may ask? Because we do this in our free time and nobody is paying us to develop these features outside of our own pace. There is also no guaranteed feature set or release. Why you may ask? Because nobody is entitled to anything we develop and choose not to release.

At the end of the day this project really boils down to three things that we think people should be able to do.

• Arm11 kernel access for RAM editing and debugging (already done)
• A region free solution for n3ds (being worked on).
• Possibly some sort of signed homebrew channel from home menu with access to services such as CSDN (for sound on n3ds)?

Now I'm sorry but I'm calling you out on this. There's a difference between simply not developing something and actively blocking it. This project was great when it was a fully open source project, the goal wasn't piracy but if people ended up using it to develop piracy well, that's their legal issue to worry about not yours. Don't try to stand on the moral high ground here. At the end of the day you're doing exacly the same thing as the gateway team, hacking a system to run unauthorized code. The only difference is they decided to actually get paid for doing it.

Also, I am sick and tired of hearing these piracy "debates":

1. It's not a moral issue it's an ethical and most important an legal issue.
2. Taking away revenue from developers is wrong. We have to eat too you know. If you don't like what we make, then don't play our games.
3. Trying to rationalize piracy by saying "oh it only hurts the big evil game corporations" is a crock of shit and just goes how little you know about business and economics.
4. Telling developers that they are hypocrites for not enabling piracy but personally downloading a movie, game etc. every once in awhile just goes to show how ignorant you are. Pirating for personal use and enabling piracy for millions is a completely different situation.
5. Insulting developers when you don't get your way isn't helping your case. It may work when your mommy won't buy you what you want, but we could care less about your "opinions".

Well then since you're personally called out my argument here I feel inclined to answer these so called "points"

1. It's not a legal issue at all, for the same reason that emulators get by fine. As long as you are not specifically enabling piracy you are fine. In this case not only are you not enabling piracy your putting in artificial AP checks. So yes its a moral issue.
2. I use piracy to try before you buy. Too many games now are $5 games sold at huge markups because companies know that once you buy it you can't return it.
3. No one has used that argument. The argument being used is that studies have shown the impact of piracy on the industry as a whole is minimal and that companies use industry-funded scare tactics to make it seem worse than it is.
4. I'm saying you're hypocrites for enabling EMULATORS while decrying the emulation of current gen games. Both are piracy yet one is considered "morally" right because "oh hey it's old".
5. No one's insulted the developers (well a minority have), the only people throwing around insults on a regular basis are the people defending the project. Most of us have been very civil when debating the issue. (we can add yourself to that list by the way, hypocrisy strikes again!)

 

[Hashtastrophe]

That's a rather specific implementation detail that we don't really wanna disclose.

Fair enough. I suppose I could always find out on my own when it's released. (Knowing me I'd never actually get around to it, too lazy, not enough time, whatever. I have zero intention of making anything public though. I just like knowing how people solve problems like this. And if I wanted to pirate things it would be faster to just make my own firm loader than to wait and /maybe/ find out what you guys did to get HB working and then abuse that in some way. Or you know, buy a gateway or sky or some crap. Damn, there's a lot of options to pirate things now that I think about it. Why are people even complaining?)

 

[overlord00]

Fair enough. I suppose I could always find out on my own when it's released. (Knowing me I'd never actually get around to it, too lazy, not enough time, whatever. I have zero intention of making anything public though. I just like knowing how people solve problems like this. And if I wanted to pirate things it would be faster to just make my own firm loader than to wait and /maybe/ find out what you guys did to get HB working and then abuse that in some way. Or you know, buy a gateway or sky or some crap. Damn, there's a lot of options to pirate things now that I think about it. Why are people even complaining?)

are you me? I feel pretty similar.
I'd like to know how this all works, so if I can be motivated enough, I'm trying to look into this myself
cheerio Mr Wizard.

 

[megazero1x1]

are you me? I feel pretty similar.
I'd like to know how this all works, so if I can be motivated enough, I'm trying to look into this myself
cheerio Mr Wizard.

just what are the skill required to do something like this.
i would really like to help out but all i know is the C and C++ programming languages.

 

[Hashtastrophe]

are you me? I feel pretty similar.
I'd like to know how this all works, so if I can be motivated enough, I'm trying to look into this myself
cheerio Mr Wizard.

Cheerio Mr Newest Member. Greetz from Le Canada.

I hope that you do get motivated to poke around and learn all-the-things.jpg and I hope you enjoy it.

 

[WulfyStylez]

I like what this girl had to say on the topic of emulators being equivalent to opening piracy on a new platform with no piracy:

Homebrew lets you run whatever you want -> Somebody could code an emulator -> People could download roms and steal older games -> Some piracy is allowed, so you should allow ALL piracy

...is literally the dumbest logic I've ever heard. And I hear that train of thought way too often.

Also you speak of debating an issue like there is an issue to be debated here. In this particular situation, it's take it or leave it. We're making a loader that lets users be region free, along with other stuff including a proper homebrew loader through the home menu. If you don't like that, you don't have to use it or even imagine it exists. You don't have to post in our thread, either.

All of that being said; to everyone else, sorry if we come off a little salty sometimes. It gets pretty tiring dealing with /r/atheism-tier commentary on our work on a day-to-day basis.

 

[lPolarisl]

I like what this girl had to say on the topic of emulators being equivalent to opening piracy on a new platform with no piracy:


Also you speak of debating an issue like there is an issue to be debated here. In this particular situation, it's take it or leave it. We're making a loader that lets users be region free, along with other stuff including a proper homebrew loader through the home menu. If you don't like that, you don't have to use it or even imagine it exists. You don't have to post in our thread, either.

All of that being said; to everyone else, sorry if we come off a little salty sometimes. It gets pretty tiring dealing with /r/atheism-tier commentary on our work on a day-to-day basis.

Totally understood, your in an unusual situation now due to what you are doing.

Personally, I'd be happy if you shared anything you are doing, be it a mega-ultra custom firmware or simply another homebrew.

Keep it up and good luck

 

[Hashtastrophe]

All of that being said; to everyone else, sorry if we come off a little salty sometimes. It gets pretty tiring dealing with /r/atheism-tier commentary on our work on a day-to-day basis.

All of us sane (as far as gbatemp members go) users totally understand. Just keep doing what you feel like doing, whether it's discovering and documenting or making homebrew better. You guys are doing way more than most people ever will and I (and many, many others I assure you) seriously appreciate it. And nobody has any say over your work except you, so they can suck it if they don't like it.

Thanks!

 

[sanni]

Is savedatafiler piracy or homebrew?
Also can I use the same emunand on different 3DS models? Like 2DS and N3DS? Or will the emunand be tied to a certain console.

 

[marksteele]

I like what this girl had to say on the topic of emulators being equivalent to opening piracy on a new platform with no piracy:


Also you speak of debating an issue like there is an issue to be debated here. In this particular situation, it's take it or leave it. We're making a loader that lets users be region free, along with other stuff including a proper homebrew loader through the home menu. If you don't like that, you don't have to use it or even imagine it exists. You don't have to post in our thread, either.

All of that being said; to everyone else, sorry if we come off a little salty sometimes. It gets pretty tiring dealing with /r/atheism-tier commentary on our work on a day-to-day basis.

Then remove any mention of the word Open and the word source from the OP? Also you might want to remove kernel access since that's not the overall goal anymore, its a homebrew loader. It's not our fault if your goal has changed so much due to public pressure that your own OP isn't recognizable anymore.

I fully understand that you get annoyed with some of the people bringing this up, but we make valid points. What your work is, is no longer what it set out to be. This should be reflected in the OP.

 

[Hashtastrophe]

Also can I use the same emunand on different 3DS models? Like 2DS and N3DS? Or will the emunand be tied to a certain console.

It's console specific. (Only works on the unit that it was made for)

Then remove any mention of the word Open and the word source from the OP? Also you might want to remove kernel access since that's not the overall goal anymore, its a homebrew loader. It's not our fault if your goal has changed so much due to public pressure that your own OP isn't recognizable anymore.

But A) it's still partly open source (at least some of the parts they originally promised would be). And B) you still have ARM11 kernel access so this info is accurate.

That being said, a cleanup of the OP is needed.

 

[WulfyStylez]

Is savedatafiler piracy or homebrew?
Also can I use the same emunand on different 3DS models? Like 2DS and N3DS? Or will the emunand be tied to a certain console.

Emunand is tied to consoles since there's lots of console-specific encryption on your NAND (and stuff in your nand).
SaveDataFiler is definitely not a legally sound app to use, at least. It's from the ctr-sdk, and thus as bad as devmenu or any other Nintendo CIAs for developers. Someone really needs to make an open-source (or at least ctrulib-based) replacement for it because of that. I was thinking about it before I got way into development on this project. It wouldn't really benefit this project much anyways. Definitely good for save editing or whatever, though.

Then remove any mention of the word Open and the word source from the OP? Also you might want to remove kernel access since that's not the overall goal anymore, its a homebrew loader. It's not our fault if your goal has changed so much due to public pressure that your own OP isn't recognizable anymore.

The OP is a mess and needs a lot of revision. We've been too busy to do that. Also plenty of it's open! Bootstrap is/will be a very useful tool for CN-based homebrew. Our goal hasn't changed due to public pressure, but rather the desire of people working on this project to go above and beyond.

 

[marksteele]

The OP is a mess and needs a lot of revision. We've been too busy to do that. Also plenty of it's open! Bootstrap is/will be a very useful tool for CN-based homebrew. Our goal hasn't changed due to public pressure, but rather the desire of people working on this project to go above and beyond.

Well that's fair enough, as long as you acknowledge it needs a bit of a revision. I think that's what is causing a LOT of the confusion around the project.

(on an offtopic note: Does anyone else HATE how the forum doesn't allow quote trains? I mean I get why but it's annoying as heck when your trying to quote something that needs the context of another quote)

 

[Zidapi]

Guys the argument of being able to "backup your carts" honestly died last generation. If you want all your games stored on your SD card then buy them from the eshop. I don't care if some obscure games aren't available to purchase in that format or if you already own a billion carts. Game "backups" are just flat out something that we're just not interested in supporting and we are certainly not going to go out of our way to develop some crazy method of trying to "authenticate" that you actually purchased the cart. Why you may ask? Because we don't care enough about that feature for our own personal use to develop it. At the end of the day this project is about developing things we want to use. Why you may ask? Because nobody is paying us to develop things we could care less about. There is also not ETA for release. Why you may ask? Because we do this in our free time and nobody is paying us to develop these features outside of our own pace. There is also no guaranteed feature set or release. Why you may ask? Because nobody is entitled to anything we develop and choose not to release.[/I

Sorry, I didn't mean to get you riled up.

I was just spitballing ideas because I knew it was something people were interested in, and until right now there hadn't been a clear stance from the team on "legitimate backups".

A method of playing "legitimate backups" isn't something especially important to me personally. While I have 50+ 3DS games, I'm only ever playing a handful at a time, so I can easily carry them on me.

The only appropriate reply when asked about release dates is "when it's ready", for precisely the reasons outlined at the end of the quoted paragraph.

All in all an excellent post that addresses many questions that seem to be cropping up frequently. Hopefully this puts an end it.