Learning about low level stuff

[_112]

Okay so I watched this video and did not understand the whole thing were did they learn all this? Were did they start what did they read were do you learn about memory stuff like? Not only for 3ds but for other stuff I see all these exploits coming about and never know were they started or what they read to get there any help with this would be great.

 

[Youkai]

Well I only fast forwarded trough this but it seems most of it is about Programming, so I guess it would be the best to either start with a book or some webpage that teaches you how to programm.
another thing would be to maybe built some stuff with little pcs like the Raspberry Pi or Arduino to learn how you could use these things ... not only installing linux on them but connecting the pins with some other devices and programm something like to make an LED board blink in different patterns or whatever (should be an "easy" start)

When you can do all of this by yourself without any tutorials you might be able to go into all this stuff even further.

 

[_112]

Okay okay also What about registers and SVC tables and stuff like that?

 

[Cyan]

maybe also read ARM (and PPC if you want wii/wiiu) technical documents, like this :
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp

understanding how the processor is working on a low level, with all its internal memory access and registers.
I don't know if that link is useful, that's just one I saw this week, I didn't read it.
I had another one few month ago which explained PPC kernel memory management (IBAT/DBAT) too.

 

[_112]

Thank you that will definitely help but also as I said before were did the learn about SVC tables and registers and stuff like that and even ROP is there a main page for all this? Or do I have to scour that internet for this information.

 

[FAST6191]

Going from zero to going toe to toe with modern consoles and devices, with all the crypto, security and complexity, is not the nicest in for this sort of thing compared to stuff from years past. It is not impossible and you do have some niceties, including things you can sort of just learn like ROP and that helps bypassing things, to say nothing of the wonder that is modern programmable chips. Likewise when you watch this sort of thing it is not a coincidence that the few people on stage usually take care of a different part of the puzzle.

But yeah a basic appreciation of device design, operating systems, assembly programming (I like http://www.plantation-productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/index.html and http://www.intel-assembler.it/porta...-parts/A-guide-about-Assembler-in-8-parts.asp ), some cyptography (if you are really new to this I don't know if I want to suggest https://www.schneier.com/books/applied_cryptography/ and some of the other stuff he has done but if you can get on with it then you will learn a lot, and it is otherwise the default reference for those wanting to really know cryptography).
Beyond that http://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf (PDF link) is very good stuff.

I had a thread around here with some more stuff in http://gbatemp.net/threads/some-hacking-concepts-and-links.287721/ , it is a bit outdated at this point but has some links which might be of interest.

 

[sarkwalvein]

First read your prefered book on computer architecture, then try programming a little in some low level programming language.
Do some assembler and some C.
Try to understand how things work and you will realize how to exploit them.
I am no expert regarding this, but ROP is just a hackers trick based on call stack manipulation. You get the idea of how it works easily and see how they got this idea when you know how functions calls normally work (how they affect the stack, and how affecting the stack can be used to manipulate the return address and hence executed instructions).
So, I would say what you need to do first is learn some computer architecture, try some low-level programming language, understand how things work and also how system calls work and how are they compiled from C, C++, etc. Think on how to exploit that.