The Edge of I-Hacked

from PSP-Updates

Yesterday we got the breaking news that Kernel mode in 2.5 and 2.6 had been unlocked by hitchhikr of “hitchhikr SoftWorks” and demo scene group Neural. This was a incredible accomplishment that was previously thought impossible. Fanjita and many other members of the PSP homebrew community have come together and been testing the functionality of the proposed exploit.

So far a few interesting things have surfaced. Fanjita has shown his progress with the newly found exploit and today we bring you another. Dark_Alex from our forums has released a “Downgrader Test” for 2.50 / 2.60 PSP’s. We have been watching carefully over this downgrader since its release and have got the entire scoop for you.

Dark_Alex’s Downgrader Test for 2.50 / 2.60 version firmware requires a few very specific steps to be taken in order to get a glimpse at the doorway to success. As listed in the title this is TEST software and by no way 100% functional on all PSP’s. With that said, we have heard a number of test reports on this Downgrader and have the brick count results after the jump.

“Therefore downgrading from 2.6 to 1.5 could in fact become a reality.”

It wasn’t long after the release that a few brave souls stepped up to test this new release. users who claimed to have succeeded in downgrading from 2.6 to 1.5. PSPxNax announced that he had successfully downgraded from 2.6 to 1.5. Soon after 1 more report of a successful upgrade from the IRC room I was idling came in. Then the dreadful news struck. One PSP has succumb to the death brick. Suspense filled the room as we waiting for further confirmation. Not another 5 minutes then another report of another PSP taking the plunge into darkness.

At this point I turned to the forums which was already full of possible outcomes for PSP owners who were brave enough to take the stab at reaching towards that beautiful paradise of homebrew or laying their PSP on a death bed. TheMarioKarters, known hacking enthusiast was all over it. He then reported sadly a few posts later that his attempt had been unsuccessful. Note that owners of the TA-082 version PSP’s, like TMK’s should not attempt the downgrade as it will most likely fail.

One of our moderators Abe Froeman was determined to get to the bottom of this and setup his PSP to face the downgrade roulette. After getting fully setup he attempted the downgrade. He too was unsuccessful. However, something unusual happened while he was trying to downgrade and he was able to get his PSP to reboot again by shorting the battery as previously outlined by PSIX developer Naoneo.

With all of this such an surge of excitement slowly starting to dim I turned back to the dark dungeons of IRC to check on the latest developments. A smile started grew on my face as my assumptions were confirmed, not all hope was lost. The developers discussing this concept design were not totally pessimistic. New ideas on what might be able to solve the problem with the downgrader started filling the channel. Some shot down, other acknowledge and discussed. A collective of independent remarkably intelligent and creative developers apparently having no limits.

While speaking to one of the developers who was involved in the discussion he divulged information on what could be possible solutions to fix bugs in the this first Test Downgrader. “sceloManager and flash0 on 2.01+ dont get along very well…at all”, said Bri3d. “Calls to the Sony PRX upgrade functions format the flash and write the IPL. After that copying the files will fail [since] trying to remount flash0 read/write is a no go.” So at this point theres still more work to be done. However, he said it was very possible in the future. Downgrading from 2.6 to 1.5 could in fact become a reality. My jaw drops at the thought.

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT READY FOR GENERAL USE. DEVELOPERS MAY FIND THIS USEFUL FOR TESTING BUT PLEASE TAKE NOTE AT THE CURRENT STATE THIS WILL BRICK YOUR PSP. Please read the information in the thread provided below. It is there for your sake. If you try out this Downgrader TEST you acknowledge that you are taking a risk and are the only one responsible for your own actions.

Forum Release Thread: [ Downgrader Test 2.50 / 2.60 ]

from QJ.NET - PSP Updates

Break out your calendars folks, because this may be a day that you want to mark as a pivotal day in the history of PSP homebrew. A developer known as hitchhikr of “hitchhikr SoftWorks” and coder companion Neural have come out with a Proof of Concept of a 2.50/2.60 Firmware Exploit! Once implemented and fine tuned for “normal user” use, this will bring 2.50 and 2.60 Firmware up to the same homebrew capability that 1.50 PSP owners enjoy with FULL kernel mode access - although Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories will still be required, just like with eLoader.

Speaking of eLoader, Fanjita is already working with hitchhikr on incorporating this new exploit into an easily executable means via eLoader. After a brief chat with Fanjita, he’s told us that you can expect some generic application for developers to hopefully be released in the next 24 hours. It will take a bit longer before something useable for non-devs will be released.

The exploit takes advantage of an added security check in 2.50/2.60 Firmware for sceKernelLoadExec, which is responsible for loading EBOOTs, but Sony also accidentally added an overflow bug, which means this exploit will not work with 2.0 and 2.01 Firmware.

Below you will find a download of hitchhikr’s & Neural’s Proof of Concept - this is not intended for the casual user. It creates dump files containing kernel memory dumps in the root of the memstick (boot.bin, kmem.bin, klib.bin). It also creates writeaccess.bin which contains just the hex (12 34 56 78) to prove that kmem CAN be written to.

But don’t start upgrading those PSP’s yet until a viable means of implementation is released! Also, this breakthrough does not open up the possibility of a downgrader due to the protection in the IPL in 2.50 firmware. Although speculation has already begun that this will open the door to the decrypting of 2.70 Firmware, allowing it to be emulated a la Devhook.

We will stay on top of this breaking news all day long and be constantly updating this news post with information as soon as we get it! Stay with QJ.NET and PSPUpdates for all the latest!

Download: [2.60 Firmware Exploit - Proof of Concept]
Read: [QJ.NET Forum Discussion Thread]

Note: This news post will stay at the top of the page for most of the day to ensure everyone gets a chance to see this breaking story unfold. Scroll down for more up to the minute news from QJ.NET!

from blogs.wdevs.com/ColinAngusMackay

Anyone who is running Windows XP SP2 know what I’m talking about. That stupid, annoying, most ill-designed dialog box ever invented in the history of the computer science that asks “Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?”
And there are only two options: Restart Now/Restart Later. “Restart Later” means that this stupid thing will ask you again in 10 minutes. Yes, if you’re willing to work for the next 4 hours until lunch before rebooting, this means you’ll need to answer this question 24 times. Did I mention that the dialog steals the focus?

Now, to get rid of it:
Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations

You can configure how often it will nag you (I re-configured it for 720 minutes, which means I’ll be asked twice on a work day), or completely disable it.

Oh, I almost forgot: this setting is only loaded when Windows starts, so a reboot is needed. If that stupid dialog is on your screen now, just stop the “Automatic Updates” service (but keep it as Automatic, so it gets reloaded on the next start) and you won’t see it again.

from Xbox-Scene News
Look what we received today from an anonymous, but trusted, source …

Look what’s running in the background …

Look what’s running in the background …

That’s a big HD …

from openoffice.org

Microsoft offers you a “test
drive” so that you can see what Microsoft Office 2007 might look like
when it finally goes on sale.

The OpenOffice.org Community invite you to go one better - download real OpenOffice.org 2 software today for a test drive.
If you like it, use it free for as long as you like.
We say it’s the ultimate no-strings-attached test drive - if you enjoy the test drive, keep the car!

• Like MS-Office, OpenOffice.org 2 is a complete office suite, with a
  word processor,
  spreadsheet,
  presentations,
  drawing,
  and database.
• Like MS-Office, OpenOffice.org 2 will happily use all your existing office
  files in MS-Word, MS-Excel, and MS-Powerpoint format
• Unlike MS-Office, OpenOffice.org 2 is free of
  charge to use for any purpose: domestic, educational, government, commercial
• Unlike MS-Office, you don’t have to worry that you may be taken to court
  to prove you have a valid licence
• Unlike MS-Office, OpenOffice.org 2 includes valuable extra features, such as the ability to create pdf files
• Unlike changing to MS-Office 2007, changing to OpenOffice.org 2 does not
  require you to learn how to use your software all over again. Indeed,
  reports have shown migration to OpenOffice.org 2 is 90% cheaper than
  migrating to MS-Office 2007.

So, why waste
time “test-driving” an artist’s impression of MS-Office
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So what are you waiting for? It costs nothing to try. If you like it, OpenOffice.org 2 costs nothing to
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from nUbuntu - Network Ubuntu

nUbuntu 6.06 - Released
So at 6:52am BST I have released the nUbuntu based on 6.06. There are not many changes in this release, just some updated packages. Head on over to the download page for the link. More mirrors will be added soon plus a torrent link.

—-
The main goal of nUbuntu is to create a distribution which is derived from the Ubuntu distribution, and add packages related to security testing, and remove unneeded packages, such as Gnome, Openoffice.org, and Evolution. nUbuntu is the result of an idea two people had to create a new distribution for the learning experience. Many people ask, “What makes it better than X?”, or “Why should I use this over Y”. Our answer to this question is, we do not think about whether people are using it or not. We are more concerned about the learning process. If you want to try something with a clean interface, fast, and an excellent range of programs please don’t hesitate to download nUbuntu.

from Personal Finance Advice

I don’t know why people don’t like to call the different companies that give them services to try and get a better price, but there are a lot of people out there. My mom is one of them. I wrote last September that we shaved my mom’s cable bill from $65 to $39.95 a month last September. After doing so, I specifically told her that she needed to call back every 3 months to get a better rate, which she promptly failed to do. Even worse, she decided to upgrade her account to a silver level to get some of the premium movie channels and I found she was paying $79.20 a month for cable.

That was ridiculous when there were other competing firms offering a free month and $29.95 a month after that for similar service. So I gave a call to the cable company today to see if we could get a better deal for her. I simply called like I always had done in the past and went directly to the cancel service option. I explained I had a better deal from one of their competitors (they asked which offer and I gave the company name and the offer), but really didn’t want to go through all the hassle of changing if they could give me a similar deal. While they didn’t match the deal, they did drop the rates significantly over what she had been paying.

They actually came back with a number of different options and I ended up taking the one that offered the exact same service (including the premium channels my mom likes) for $39.95 a month rather than the $79.20 which is good for 6 months - that’s a nearly a 50% savings a month and a total savings of $235.50 over the 6 months of the offer. Certainly not bad for a 15 minute phone call.

This goes back to my philosophy that most people can save a significant amount of money by following through on painless saving - my mother has the exact same service that she had yesterday, but is paying half the price for it for it. And that money can go straight into an investment account instead of into the pocket of the cable company.

It also is a great illustration that saving money is the best investment that you can make. 15 minutes earned me the same amount that $4,500 in a 5% account would have earned in a full year. This is the reason why I don’t understand why people are not willing to make the calls - the worst that can happen is they service says “no” and you pay exactly what you have always been paying - or more likely you can save hundreds like I just did for my mom.

from Xbox-Scene News:

Commodore4eva (already known for the modified DVD firmwares he released for the Xbox1 Samsung drive, Toshiba-Samung TS-H943, Hitachi-LG GDR-3120L 47D and Hitachi-LG GDR-3120L 46D) just released the modified DVD firmware (FW) for the Hitachi-LG GDR-3120L drive with FW 59. This release also includes the previously released firmwares for Hitachi-LG GDR-3120L 47D and 46D.
Commodore4eva also said he will release a ‘Xtreme0800 firmware’ for the Hitachi-LG drive that will allow you to dump the security sector (SS) of original discs with this drive too (currently only possible with the Toshiba-Samung TS-H943 drive).

from sectools.org

After the tremendously successful 2000 and 2003 security tools surveys, Insecure.Org is delighted to release this 2006 survey. I (Fyodor) asked users from the nmap-hackers mailing list to share their favorite tools, and 3,243 people responded. This allowed me to expand the list to 100 tools, and even subdivide them into categories. Anyone in the security field would be well advised to go over the list and investigate tools they are unfamiliar with. I discovered several powerful new tools this way. I also will be pointing newbies to this site whenever they write me saying “I don’t know where to start”.

from PIC clock

Red digits on this photo appear to float in the air in front of the clock. This illusion is based on inertia of a human eye. If LED-formed digits will periodically and frequently enough flash, they will appear solid and steady. And since the matrix of digits is formed by a mechanically scanned single line of LEDs, and the fast rotating clock body is not visible, it leaves digits “suspended” in the air. The first clock using this concept was built (and PIC microcontroller code written) by Bob Blick, please visit his page for yet more photos of his original clock and clocks built by other people.

The heart of this clock is PIC16F84 microcontroller. (Older PIC16C84 version works just fine). The microcontroller is programmed with the code provided below. If you don’t have a PIC programmer, it isn’t difficult to make one. A few parts (for a couple bucks) connected to the parallel port of your PC will program the PIC for you.