PS2: Mention FreeDVDBoot and MechaPwn

vuori commented 2 years ago

In the exploits section, it might be interesting to mention FreeDVDBoot (a DVD player exploit that can run arbitrary software with a burned DVD-Video disc) and MechaPwn (persistent removal of certain region-lock/anti-piracy measures on late models).

I think both are interesting from historical and architectural perspectives (these are just my own speculations):

FreeDVDBoot supports only a few fat models, but most of the late (slim) models. It seems that Sony was aiming for more software generality and fewer component SKUs, and on the other hand there was an organizational loss of interest in lockdown measures: exploit protections present in fat versions of the DVD player were apparently just left out in slims.
MechaPwn relies on a writable patch area of the Mechacon disc access controller that was added when the original controller was replaced with an ARM-based one in late models. Apparently Sony was willing to put up with the risk of exploitation to cut down on mask ROM costs. MechaPwn enables bypassing region restrictions; how well depends on the device model and region. The regional differences in BIOS-side region-lock/anti-piracy functionalities seen in the MechaPwn README are a pretty interesting source for Sony Kremlinology in itself.

If you don't have time I can probably write a PR with a few words regarding these. I'm not sure what would be a suitable scope though. A few sentences for each?

flipacholas commented 2 years ago

Yeah, this would be a good addition. If you want, you can leave a few sentences here and I'll try to fit them in the article. Thanks.

mirh commented 2 years ago

There's also Fortuna.

flipacholas commented 4 months ago

FreeDVDBoot and Fortuna have been added as part of 4a4e54bbe5a99b6dbf7767fe099d85bbcec23e85 , only left in the checklist is now MechaPwn

flipacholas / Architecture-of-consoles

PS2: Mention FreeDVDBoot and MechaPwn #50