Building secure devices means finding the right balance between a number of variables. Your development needs to be robust, but security should not impede customer journey. You need to test your device extensively, while observing the cost and time to market. Finally, you need to outsmart your adversaries, and this heavily depends on how valuable your target is. Historically, gaming has been attracting the best hacker talent. These devices are usually well protected against basic attacks. When their security is finally circumvented, quite often it is a result of a sophisticated attack on hardware. In this blog post we collected a number of notable examples of hardware exploits in gaming consoles over the years.
The good-old tweezers
One of the most prominent and well-known examples of console hacks is the “tweezer” attack on Nintendo Wii. This legacy Gamecube hack leveraged fault injection to extract encryption keys from the console’s memory. By shorting various address lines underneath the console’s RAM chip with a pair of tweezers, attackers were able to deceive the console into shifting a window of Gamecube memory, thereby tricking the system into revealing its secrets. This exploit provided access to critical components of the console’s architecture, including encryption keys stored in the console’s memory. These encryption keys are integral to the security of the gaming ecosystem, as they play a crucial role in safeguarding against unauthorized access, piracy, and tampering.
The crowbar approach
Fault injection attacks, particularly voltage glitching, are still relevant in gaming consoles and can exploit vulnerabilities in SoCs, leading to security breaches and code execution control. Security researcher Yifan Lu conducted a study on how voltage glitching can cause critical timing violations in CMOS behavior, performing a real-world attack on the PlayStation Vita’s SoC, gaining early execution control and dumping the secure boot ROM. Voltage glitching, especially through crowbar glitching, is inexpensive and widely applicable to most chips, making it appealing to attackers.
Lu’s study involved introducing timing violations into a digital circuit, identifying targets, and injecting faults to exploit software vulnerabilities for code execution. The attack could have been prevented with a hardware-based security core that securely runs sensitive code and utilizes advanced anti-tamper techniques. Hardware-based security cores protect against fault injection, non-volatile memory key extraction, side-channel attacks, and other threats to secure SoCs.
The Fusée Gelée
The Nintendo Switch hardware is similar to a smartphone, making it possible to run Android on the console. This may occur as an appealing feature. A group called “Switchroot” has developed a build of Android for the Nintendo Switch which involves the “Fusée Gelée” exploit. The exploit targets a flaw in the recovery mode of the Tegra X1 SoC that allows for a buffer overflow, enabling control over the Tegra’s Boot and Power Management processor (BPMP). Tools like an RCM jig are used to bridge pins on the Switch to access the recovery mode. With this newfound control, hackers could inject custom software like the “Hekate” bootloader, which provides a user-friendly boot menu for launching various applications and custom firmware on the Nintendo Switch.
The Reset Glitch Hack
One of the more recent console hardware exploits is the Reset Glitch Hack (RGH) on Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 was designed to be secure from a software point of view, making software-based approaches of running unsigned code mostly ineffective. The RGH involves triggering processor bugs through glitching to change the code execution process efficiently.
The glitching process requires precise timing and hardware to send a reset pulse to the processor. The current implementation of RGH uses a Xilinx CoolRunner II CPLD board and VHDL code to glitch the console successfully. Refining the glitch timing involves measuring and adjusting the reset pulse timing to find the sweet spot for successful glitching. The RGH process has caveats such as varying success rates per try and the need for fast hardware.
According to EY, an estimated 2.9 billion people played a video game in 2021, when global revenue exceeded $193 billion. A secure system encompasses not only the hardware and software components of a gaming device but also the overarching architecture and protocols designed to protect against unauthorized access and exploitation. The effectiveness of secure components is contingent upon their integration within a secure system architecture. Even the most advanced hardware security methods can be rendered ineffective if they are not properly implemented or if system-level vulnerabilities expose them to exploitation.
By understanding the technical nuances of these exploits and collaborating with security experts, companies can better protect their devices and safeguard intellectual property and user data from unauthorized access and malicious attacks.