New PSP exploit found in GripShift, works on PSP-3000

January 3, 2009

Damn, it’s so cool to actually see this beauty working – and on a PSP-3000 no less! The PSP scene was buzzing the other day when MaTiAz found an exploit in GripShift! See the full article for a video demo – complete with flashy lights!

Download: GripShift savegame exploit POC
Download: GripShift savegame exploit POC v2
Visit: QJ.NET PSP development forum

Now this is how you start a new year! New exploit, old game! Damn, it’s so cool to actually see this beauty working – and on a PSP-3000 no less! The PSP scene was buzzing the other day when MaTiAz found an exploit (read: buffer overflow!) in the three year old game, GripShift.

We’ll leave the technical bits for later. Now, we’ll have this video from FreePlay do the talking:

Holy… mother… of… pearl… o_0

Now then, the details: MaTiAz says that they’ve yet to find any further use for this, but it’s still a new exploit. It could lead to further hacks, and for now, it’s merely a proof of concept. Be that as it may, this is a great start, and a rather sweet find! Here’s MaTiAz explaining the exploit:

GripShift has a buffer overflow vulnerability when loading savegames. The savegame contains the profile name which can be easily used to overwrite $ra. The savegame file is pretty big (25kB) so you have lots of space to put your code there. I wrote a simple blob of code to paint the framebuffer completely white (to just indicate that arbitrary code is running ). The return address is located at offset 0xA9 in the file. In this poc it points to 0x08E4CD50 (which is only a few bytes after the return address), and the code starts at 0xCC in the file.

It was tested on 4.01M33-2 with US version of GripShift (ULUS10040), and psplink.prx, usbhostfs.prx and deemerh.prx loaded (also without psplink and usbhostfs). The decrypted savegame (sorry, couldn’t [be bothered to] get Shine’s savegame tool working so it’s in plaintext form) is in the SDDATA.BIN form which Hellcat‘s Savegame-Deemer produces (thanks to him, if the program didn’t exist I wouldn’t have bothered with this. ). Just copy the ULUS10040SAVE00 directory to /PSP/SAVEPLAIN/ and run the game. EDIT: yeah, don’t forget to have Savegame-Deemer working, duh.

There are two versions of the exploit. The first which is the raw form from MaTiAz, the other one (v2), is a version encrypted by FreePlay. It’s also been confirmed that it works all the way up to the recent CFW 5.02 GEN-A.

We’re getting there, people! Just a bit more… Hope springs eternal, folks!

Thanks to Sbrillo1 for the tip!

Download: GripShift savegame exploit POC
Download: GripShift savegame exploit POC v2
Visit: QJ.NET PSP development forum