MagicGate Encryption

[Lazy Bastard]

Does anyone perchance know anything specific about this Sony encryption system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagicGate)? I would be particularly interested in its decryption, if anyone has done any work on that...

[LiquidManZero]

The only notable thing I found was this:

http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl...language_tools

It's a pdf file in German, but it mostly translates to English. It says something about the process used in MagicGate, but I can't quite tell if it really means anything.

[Lazy Bastard]

I'll check that out later; thanks. I'm too lazy to go into details and I don't have a good link on hand, but a really old, probably forgotten forums.PS2Dev.org topic entailed a possible way to run code directly from a memory card via the remote control system. The only problem is that Sony encrypts the code it reads with MagicGate, so even if you disassembled/reassembled the code with your modifications, it wouldn't work...not to mention the fact that you couldn't disassemble it anyway while it's encrypted, heh.

[LiquidManZero]

Something I put together from a number of places is that MagicGate is really an authentication system. The code itself won't be encrypted (except maybe on PSP, which can MagicGate and AES).

[Lazy Bastard]

Can it be duplicated?

[LiquidManZero]

I didn't see anything mentioning that anywhere. I think the people who know about how it works are scared to say anything...

[cYs Driver]

no ones broken the magicgate yet so i doubt it will be broken anytime soon if at all and if you did sony would be down on your ass like a ton of bricks i recon

[LiquidManZero]

Yeah, they're still using it for everything. It's quite likely somebody has broken it, but refuses to let it get known they did.

Interestingly, I found out something related to this today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic <- This company.

If you search for "magicgate" on this page, you'll see part of why: http://www.secinfo.com/dr6nd.618j.d.htm

[Lazy Bastard]

Hmm...think they own the patent for Magic Gate?

[LiquidManZero]

I think they may have at one point. I've had no luck at all finding out what the actual patent number(s) for MagicGate, the memory cards, or even the memory sticks themselves are.

Kind of unrelated, but I found out Sony now has official psx/ps2 memory card to USB adapters for sale.

http://www.toysrus.com/product/index...290628.2290636

[Lazy Bastard]

Ah; it looked like that to me as well.

And that's cool, though it's not necessarily useful to me at this point (I can already do transfers from either to PC, heh).