Hacking Possible fix to every brick? (On the NAND)

[AfanGotTheWiiOn26December]

I need someone smart to prove me (most likely) wrong.

So I couldn't fall asleep yesterday and I thought of my low-level bricked wii. That day I watched a bunch of phone repair videos. He took out a flash memory chip from a phone and soldered it to a USB drive and recovered the data.

Could this be possible with the Wii? Take out the flash chip, solder to a USB, and flash a backup NAND?

While finding a picture of the flash memory, I found someone who took a flash chip from a USB and made "two nands".

Post automatically merged: Jul 31, 2024

https://hackaday.com/2008/06/06/wii-dual-nand-flash-hack/

 

[zxr750j]

You wil need a nand-flasher to program the nand: this is not like a regular usb-drive.

 

[AfanGotTheWiiOn26December]

You wil need a nand-flasher to program the nand: this is not like a regular usb-drive.

Would I need more hardware?

 

[KleinesSinchen]

He took out a flash memory chip from a phone and soldered it to a USB drive and recovered the data.

May I see that video? Sounds interesting.
Must have been a very old phone. They are encrypted by default for many years -- which leaves you with garbage data if you read out the memory with external hardware.

The same is true for Wii consoles: You need the encryption key to write anything meaningful.
For those compatible with BootMii in boot2 there is the possibility to use a hardware flasher to install BootMii. This has been done in the past with Infectus.

 

[AfanGotTheWiiOn26December]

May I see that video? Sounds interesting.
Must have been a very old phone. They are encrypted by default for many years -- which leaves you with garbage data if you read out the memory with external hardware.

The same is true for Wii consoles: You need the encryption key to write anything meaningful.
For those compatible with BootMii in boot2 there is the possibility to use a hardware flasher to install BootMii. This has been done in the past with Infectus.

Samsung S6. The channel is MDrepair. He did something with encryption if I remember well.

Post automatically merged: Jul 31, 2024

Samsung S6. The channel is MDrepair. He did something with encryption if I remember well.

Infact it was some smartphone, not sure if it was samsung.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Should be this one.
And he says something like: "I took this chip from my customer's Galaxy S II"

Indeed possible to recover raw data in this case. Very likely not encrypted.

But the Wii is encrypted with console unique key. You can't extract data without the key and can't write anything meaningful.

 

[ukigh4ie2]

But the Wii is encrypted with console unique key. You can't extract data without the key and can't write anything meaningful.

Question of understanding: Can you copy block by block, i.e. without interpreting the file system, as with hard disks?

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Question of understanding: Can you copy block by block, i.e. without interpreting the file system, as with hard disks?

Of course. The question is what are you going to get by this? Copy the content from a software-bricked Wii NAND chip to your computer. And then? Without the key it is random garbage. You might as well run
dd if=/dev/random of=~/random.bin bs=1M count=512

 

[AfanGotTheWiiOn26December]

But the Wii is encrypted with console unique key. You can't extract data without the key and can't write anything meaningful.

With the keys.bin? I always back it up.

Post automatically merged: Aug 1, 2024

How would you do this? (Decrypt, flash, etc)

 

[AfanGotTheWiiOn26December]

https://code.google.com/archive/p/amoxiflash/
Might be of some use.

 

[XFlak]

With the keys.bin? I always back it up.

Post automatically merged: Aug 1, 2024

How would you do this? (Decrypt, flash, etc)

Can you not make a nand backup at the same time as backing up keys without physically taking it apart?

Edit: hardware flashers are generally only needed for restore operations that can't be done otherwise

 

[AfanGotTheWiiOn26December]

Can you not make a nand backup at the same time as backing up keys without physically taking it apart?

Yes, but I said to decrypt with the keys.bin

hardware flashers are generally only needed for restore operations that can't be done otherwise

Yes, but for in case of the low-level bricks. Useless for mail bricks (for example)

 

[ukigh4ie2]

Of course. The question is what are you going to get by this? Copy the content from a software-bricked Wii NAND chip to your computer. And then? Without the key it is random garbage. You might as well run
dd if=/dev/random of=~/random.bin bs=1M count=512

I actually meant, to stick with your writing:

dd if=flash_old of=flash_new

There was no mention of decryption. But yes, you still have a messed installation.