ROM Hack What are xorpads?

[Monado_III]

Topic. I know they are used to decrypt games but what actually are they? Like how are they generated and what are they generated from?

 

[shinyquagsire23]

xorpads are used because tool creators are too lazy to decrypt files in-place from the 3DS itself, so they create a giant file which can be xor'd over another file to decrypt it. The data is generated using the 3DS AES hardware which contains keys which are currently unknown and are loaded into the AES hardware during boot in the bootloader. They can only be written and not read, hence a 3DS is needed to use them to generate data to decrypt 3DS-related files.

 

[Alex3dss]

I used xorpads when I ripped a 3ds game of a cartridge.