36C3 - Hacking Sony PlayStation Blu-ray Drives

Xbox 360 video game console had a number of widely known hacks for firmware of its optical disc drives. However, it was never the case with Blu-ray disc drives of Sony PlayStation video game consoles. In fact, up until recently there was no much information available on this subject publicly. In this presentation, I would like to share my journey of delving deep into internals and security of Sony PlayStation Blu-ray disc drives. As games are distributed within optical media, those embedded devices were intended to contain the best security possible. I will demonstrate a multiple hardware hacks and several software vulnerabilities that allowed to dump firmware and get code execution on multiple models of Sony PlayStation Blu-ray disc drives. In this presentation, I will share the following: 1) I will provide in-depth analysis of vulnerabilities and their exploitation to achieve code execution on multiple models of Sony PlayStation Blu-ray disc drives 2) I will discuss problems that I’ve encountered while reverse engineering the firmware and how I solved (some of) them 3) I will talk about security features of Sony PlayStation Blu-ray disc drives 4) I will explain what engineers did right and how achieving code execution on the drive doesn’t lead to full compromise of security oct0xor