VC RBY - Virtual Console Mew (UK)

[suloku]

I know SciresM was checking the servers for uploads and found SM, I'll ask him, maybe we can get the files. They will be encrypted, but given the size of the VC games (~10mB) maybe bruteforcing the encryption is a viable solution.

edit: I feel like bruteforcing the aes key has nothing to do with the file size and that I just said something retarded

[RupeeClock]

I have doubts about that, I don't think binary size is relative so much as there's an astronomical number of possible encryption values, so a bruteforcing attempt maybe wouldn't be shorter. I could be mistaken.

My other thought was that the VC versions might be hiding some functionality that haven't been looked into. What if a Mew distribution was planned in advance so that there exists an undocumented distribution mode in the commercial VC release of Red Version?

[suloku]

Well, seems SciresM was well aware of the titles being in the servers:
CTR-N-RMWZ Mew Trading App(E) 000400000018C500
CTR-N-RMWA ミュウ引換用ソフト 000400000018C400

There's only a jap and an Eur versions, so if any more distros are ever made, they will be the same mews we already have.

EDIT: of course, Nintendo could just use a different title with different patch and distribution, but both the JAP and EUR distribution apps were uploaded 9 months ago, so it's not like they made it for the UK event.

[RupeeClock]

Well that settles that then, there really was a special distribution version.

It'll be extremely lucky if we ever get to use them, but this was a nice finding.

[suloku]

After chating with SciresM:
- Bruteforcing the encryption is not a real solution and will never be (just wanted to make this clear)
- The OT name "trash" is intentional, as there's no way to get such a trainer name data legitimately.

- Gen 7 transfer could be potentially locked by OT, ID and DV combination. We'll see on January.

 

ps: In any case, I think it would still be great if @HMM dumped his save, same goes for RupeeClock's cousin's mew if he get's the chance. I like double checking.

[RupeeClock]

The trash being intentional is not unexpected, as it's maybe one of the few ways they can verify you have an event Mew instead of a glitched or save hacked Mew.

I hope we can get more samples too, just to confirm if there are data differences or not. At this stage it seems less likely.

[Guest]

It would have been hilarious if someone showed up to the event and traded a Mew they got from Mew glitch to the event rep who trades them the actual event Mew.

Like instead of a Pidgey or some other random thing.

Anyway interesting they'd really go through the trouble of coding something like this when it would likely have been less effort to just fill the boxes with Mews, lol. The event was pretty exclusive already so it's not like they have to deal with thousands of people coming in every day. But I guess it's there if they ever felt like re-using it for a different kind of event *shrug*

[suloku]

The 3ds doesn't have something like a 1-click save install, so they would have had to code an app that downloads and install the save to the vc game. A modified vc game that allways will have the event mew tradeable wathever you do seems better.

I wouldn't be surprised if the patch enabled the flags that allow trading and teleports you to a pokemon center once a new game is started, alongside patching a mew into party slot one, or that you can receive one by talking to an npc in the center. Probably the pokemon center is locked so you can't leave.

There are multiple options, this one seems the more reasonable. Patching the game like this doesn't need much effort and ensures the vendor will always have a mew, wathever the human factor.

[theSLAYER]

9 hours ago, suloku said:

Well, seems SciresM was well aware of the titles being in the servers:
CTR-N-RMWZ Mew Trading App(E) 000400000018C500
CTR-N-RMWA ミュウ引換用ソフト 000400000018C400

There's only a jap and an Eur versions, so if any more distros are ever made, they will be the same mews we already have.

EDIT: of course, Nintendo could just use a different title with different patch and distribution, but both the JAP and EUR distribution apps were uploaded 9 months ago, so it's not like they made it for the UK event.

whats funny about those IDs you pasted,

is that they extkey (seed) can be downloaded lol.

If we have the encrypted title key, it can be downloaded.

[Guest]

Yeah, but we're not getting that anytime soon, I'd wager.

Are the employees giving out the Mews actual Nintendo employees? I'd consider it impossible if that's the case, unless one of them went rogue lol.

It would be pretty cool just to be able to look at it and see how it works.

[RupeeClock]

if I'm not mistaken, the only way we could hope to get that key is if someone with the title installed on their system, hacked the system, and then dumped and shared the title key. That seems extremely unlikely.

[theSLAYER]

1 hour ago, Ammako said:

Yeah, but we're not getting that anytime soon, I'd wager.

Are the employees giving out the Mews actual Nintendo employees? I'd consider it impossible if that's the case, unless one of them went rogue lol.

It would be pretty cool just to be able to look at it and see how it works.

In Japan, the trading staff appeared to be staff who work in the Pokemon Center.

Well, the 3DS will likely be on the latest firmware, so good luck going rogue and downgrading that

19 minutes ago, RupeeClock said:

if I'm not mistaken, the only way we could hope to get that key is if someone with the title installed on their system, hacked the system, and then dumped and shared the title key. That seems extremely unlikely.

Or someone with high computing power and network speed and working CDN-FX to just bruteforce the enc_titleKey,
which should take a few years,

but I won't count my chances on that too

[Thunder]

1 minute ago, theSLAYER said:

In Japan, the trading staff appeared to be staff who work in the Pokemon Center.

Well, the 3DS will likely be on the latest firmware, so good luck going rogue and downgrading that

Or someone with high computing power and network speed and working CDN-FX to just bruteforce the enc_titleKey,
which should take a few years,

but I won't count my chances on that too

Don't forget to exclude the enc_titleKeys for other titles.

[RupeeClock]

Bruteforcing this sort of thing seems like a silly thing to do too, seeing as it's just a small distro app.

We kinda sorta know how to reproduce the distro app as it is, as we have data on the Mew distributed and an understanding of how the rom/VC title works. That also seems silly as you can just inject the event data now.

[theSLAYER]

9 minutes ago, Thunder said:

Don't forget to exclude the enc_titleKeys for other titles.

tho it'll likely still take a long time.
There's a post on gbatemp about it.

8 minutes ago, RupeeClock said:

Bruteforcing this sort of thing seems like a silly thing to do too, seeing as it's just a small distro app.

We kinda sorta know how to reproduce the distro app as it is, as we have data on the Mew distributed and an understanding of how the rom/VC title works. That also seems silly as you can just inject the event data now.

I agree that brute-forcing this seems silly.

But, the it's kind of the same as being able to reproduce wonder cards VS only uploading actual ones.

It'll be valuable to preserve the original data itself,
cause that way we'll know without a shred of doubt the generation method and other stuff is correct.

For example, I've been looking to preserve the 10Anniv distribution cart backup,
but I haven't been able to find it online.

Imagine if people didn't preserve the wonder cards for gen III event,
we would not have the wonder card injection system up after 10 years.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, theSLAYER said:

I agree that brute-forcing this seems silly.

But, the it's kind of the same as being able to reproduce wonder cards VS only uploading actual ones.

It'll be valuable to preserve the original data itself

This exactly.

We can dump event files from our games to preserve those so they can still be injected into save files years into the future, but that's nothing compared to preserving the original distribution methods in the first place. It would just be a shame for those to be lost forever.

Unfortunately, most if not all of the Japanese distribution cartridges will likely be impossible to get since there was probably a lot more security around those. It'd be really cool to have one of those Slot-2 distribution cartridges for Gen 4, for example. But oh well, at least they sent a bunch of distribution cartridges over to the west where security wasn't as tight and a whole lot of them got out. We can't get all of them, but there's enough that the distribution method has been preserved pretty well I'd say, and the rom can be edited to distribute different Wondercards if we want to anyway.

[theSLAYER]

1 minute ago, Ammako said:

This exactly.

We can dump event files from our games to preserve those so they can still be injected into save files years into the future, but that's nothing compared to preserving the original distribution methods in the first place. It would just be a shame for those to be lost forever.

Unfortunately, most if not all of the Japanese distribution cartridges will likely be impossible to get since there was probably a lot more security around those. It'd be really cool to have one of those Slot-2 distribution cartridges for Gen 4, for example. But oh well, at least they sent a bunch of distribution cartridges over to the west where security wasn't as tight and a whole lot of them got out. We can't get all of them, but there's enough that the distribution method has been preserved pretty well I'd say, and the rom can be edited to distribute different Wondercards if we want to anyway.

At least Gen IV and Gen V have digital copies of the distribution in the wild.

Also, it hasn't been easy trying to secure a Gen III hard copy, as seen here.

Too bad CDN-FX isn't working for me
(even with correct title ID and enc title key, it prompts "download fail" to me),
else I'll be willing to let my computer run through the night to try to brute force a range, bit by bit.

[HaxAras]

25 minutes ago, theSLAYER said:

At least Gen IV and Gen V have digital copies of the distribution in the wild.

Also, it hasn't been easy trying to secure a Gen III hard copy, as seen here.

Too bad CDN-FX isn't working for me
(even with correct title ID and enc title key, it prompts "download fail" to me),
else I'll be willing to let my computer run through the night to try to brute force a range, bit by bit.

So you're just unable to download it in general? You guys kept saying it would take an insanely long time to brute force it. I don't know much but I kept wondering how long it would take if you had multiple computers attempting to crack it and there was some way they were all able to communicate what's already been tried. If there's xxxxxxxxxxxxx possibilities, sure it might take a while. But if you had 17 computers running day and night, I doubt it could last forever. 

[theSLAYER]

34 minutes ago, HaxAras said:

So you're just unable to download it in general? You guys kept saying it would take an insanely long time to brute force it. I don't know much but I kept wondering how long it would take if you had multiple computers attempting to crack it and there was some way they were all able to communicate what's already been tried. If there's xxxxxxxxxxxxx possibilities, sure it might take a while. But if you had 17 computers running day and night, I doubt it could last forever. 

yeah anything I download is either through FBI or Freeshop.

Also, this may be applicable:

Quote

its a 128 bit key, so 2 ^ 128 = 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 possible keys
Number of seconds in one Year = 365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds = 31,536,000

Lets say you can test 10 BILLION keys per second, every second for a year...
(not exactly sure how many keys you could test per second, but lets say 10 billion per second)
31,536,000 x 10,000,000,000,000 = 315,360,000,000,000,000 keys per year per computer.

340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 keys total (2 ^ 128)
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,315,360,000,000,000,000 keys checked per computer per year
(I've added leading zeros to show the huge difference between the numbers)

Lets say you can find the key after trying 50% of them, that is still
170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,728 keys.

source: https://gbatemp.net/threads/needs-some-help-understanding-decrypted-title-keys-and-the-encryption-state-of-installed-cia-files.433394/#post-6510956

[1quacka1]

do we know keys for 3ds games that have been officially released? Maybe they could be used to narrow the range of keys to try via bruteforce?

[evandixon]

5 minutes ago, 1quacka1 said:

do we know keys for 3ds games that have been officially released? Maybe they could be used to narrow the range of keys to try via bruteforce?

The assumption that there are no duplicate title keys is an unsafe assumption to make, since there could be duplicates.  But if that assumption were true, let's suppose there've been 1 million games released.  I'm pretty sure the actual number is far less than this, my point will still stand.  Given 2 ^ 128 = 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 possible keys, removing 1 million of them results in 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,767,211,456 possible keys, which (probably) won't finish within the life of the universe.

[theSLAYER]

11 minutes ago, 1quacka1 said:

do we know keys for 3ds games that have been officially released? Maybe they could be used to narrow the range of keys to try via bruteforce?

Did you read the post with the numbers?
Frankly the list of keys is considerable negligible compared to the amount of combinations.

[RupeeClock]

11 minutes ago, 1quacka1 said:

do we know keys for 3ds games that have been officially released? Maybe they could be used to narrow the range of keys to try via bruteforce?

We do know these keys, but these won't serve any purpose of possibly reverse-engineering anything to figure out a range of keys if Nintendo implemented their cryptography correctly. If you have 2 ^ 128 combinations of keys, you are going to pick one as randomly as possible and not limit where you can pick from.

To explain what keys are.
Every time you buy a title from the eShop, the CDN gives you a title key in encrypted format, which is stored on the 3DS system itself. This title key grants you permission to request a download from their CDN.

Due to 3DS hacking developments at the start of the year where the 3DS was fully exploited, specifically gaining control of the ARM9 kernal and breaking the cryptography implementation, this made it possible to dump and decrypt the title keys stored on a system, and even share them among other 3DS systems.

This lead to the development of an application called freeShop, which enables you to download anything directly from Nintendo's eShop CDN if you have the appropriate title keys, legitimate or illegally shared. The lack of authentication beyond anything other than title keys on the 3DS is what made this possible, and could've very easily been avoided if they authenticated purchases on the server side instead of the client side. A possible reasoning for doing this is that some 3DS systems come pre-installed with games, and if you perform a system transfer to such a system it will retain the pre-installed software along with the title key, thereby granting you that game to keep.

This state of affairs means that in order to download the Mew Distribution App, you need a 3DS that has the app installed since the title is not publicly listed, and then you would need to hack this 3DS to dump and decrypt the title key. This would be extremely unlikely as the systems would be controlled by Nintendo UK or NIntendo of Japan.

[HMM]

Sorry about how long it took. If anyone still needs a second save for anything then here it is.

sav.dat

151 - MEW - E4BE.pk1

[RupeeClock]

Oh excellent, hopefully this will shed some light on things.

I did get to see my cousin this past Christmas, but he forgot to bring his 3DS with him so sadly I didn't get to make a backup of his Mew. That means we don't have a sample that is guaranteed to have come from a separate distribution system.

Even so I imagine the data is going to be identical anyway.