Sega Saturn Copy Protection. Break it get $800

Looks like a load of them over at sega xtreme have raised $800 to try and get somone to break the copy protection for the sega saturn.

Load of info is here.

http://forums.segaxtreme.net/index.php?showtopic=15520&pid=139303&st=60&#entry139303

 

Too bad it's not possible... that is with a normal CDR or without a cartridge.

 

We'll soon see. You'd need to be pretty small minded to think that it's actually impossible

 

Think about what you said. Copy protection that defeats CDRs, defeatable BY CDRs? Ehrm, no... To do this someone will need to find a loophole in the controller if one exists and exploit it similar to the DC MIL-CD situation, I suppose I should say it's improbable until the controller is fully analyzed, THEN it will be impossible. Even to analyze it, it'd take someone REALLY talented or an insider to investigate this, and to do it for $1K would be charity, it's not going to happen. Likely someone, someday, will have to break open the controller and manually extract the ROM/figure out what exactly is going on. Breaking this is similar to satellite TV cards, it'll come from literally chemically extracting the hardware and using an electron microscope to view the contents. If I had $500 I'd add it to the pot in good faith like Iceman.

 

Or you get a $15 chip that takes five minutes to install.

 

Duh, Dreamcast, Playstation...

 

Playstation protection can be defeated by a CDR? Umm I don't think so. As I mentioned, Dreamcast boots MIL-CDs through an exploit. It however cannot boot GD-Rs without a system disc. Copy a system disc to a GD-R and can it boot? Duh, no.

 

PSX protection CAN be defeated by CD-R, it's been done by someone, apparently he found a way of "masking out" the SCEx wave, if he wasn't bullshitting about it - but he sounded knowledgeable enough. It sure as hell to look enough to find out how the protection worked at all in the first place

With regard to Saturn, I must say they did a damn good job. But there must be something to the security ring that can be faked, there's only so much a CD laser can determine, so it probably comes down mostly to finding out what the security ring *is* exactly. But maybe we would be better off if somebody found a way to emulate the CD system with a HD or something, but I'm rambling now.

 

I've seen too many bullshittings of bootable PSX CDRs. I'll only accept hard evidence as in being able to see it/try it out myself. It'd be hard to believe one person no matter how smart, because of the thousands of other "unlucky" smart people who've tried the same idea.

One way to test the security ring's usefullness is to cover it. Does anybody know if it's even necessary? Maybe the protection has nothing to do with the ring but is *similar* to the PSX. Due to the modchips geography (place of insertion) it doesn't look like the Saturn needs a media signal like the SCEX. To determine whether or not the Saturn discs are special in any way, someone should simply eavesdrop on the CDROM. Even if something new is discovered, I strongly believe that SOME outside influence will be necessary to make a bootable game from a runofthemill CD-R disc.

People must realize that everything doesn't have a backdoor and it's very possible to design systems which are impervious to software attacks. Until I see a CD-R boot without a barcode or expansion cartridge, I will keep my statement. No my point of view is not optimistic but it's pretty realistic. If it was possible, engineers in China would have done it nearly 10 years ago when they developed the modchips and Magic Card V2 because they likely have already studied the controller's archetecture which to my knowledge no SegaXtreme tech has.

 

You may be right, there. But I hope you ain't

 

Lets face it the PSX copy protection wasnt defeated by CD until just a few years ago, and with the drop off in intrest of the saturn no company has any reason to try and defeat the saturns protection. If the saturn had become top console today then it would probably have some kind of disc to boot copies like the PSX does.

 

I wouldn't mind if there was some loophole either but it's foolish to argue with the facts of today. The Saturn is made to use CDROMs both mode 1 and audio, it's not like a Dreamcast which is multitalented. I'm sure they intended to make the Saturn a CD-R proof system and I believe they did just that. I shouldn't say it's impossible but the odds lean in my favor as Sega isn't stupid and could have EASILY fixed any loopholes allowing the system to give control to a CD-R. Again, the reason why I disagree is because you guys are counting on the incompetency of Sega.

 

That's not true. "Copy protection" for PSX was defeated by Datel in like 1995. That is the same technology those swap CDs use. Today there still isn't a way to burn a bootable disc for use on a retail unmodified unit.

 

it be crazy if someone could break the protection ring, so far no ones been able to figure out what exactly is contained within the security ring, even the dump of the saturn system disc does not reveal any info on how it disables the security check.

 

Keep in mind that the Saturn runs cd-r video-cd's & audio cd's just fine.
Especially because the mpeg cart (with added software on the cart) makes it run
media without any security ring. If one would sample that software and use it
to playback software ..etc. But it's all speculation..

 

Who knows if the thing really IS a security ring. The fact that the Saturn can read CD-R never left my mind, it's not the issue. Most of a CD-R is visibly the same as a pressed CD, absolutely no different The issue is that without influence (how many times have I said this?) the system will not give control to CD-R media because the media will be rejected before it can. There is a clear order of operation, you MUST agree with this statement: a piece of code cannot defeat the protection if it cannot run in the first place, period. If you don't, you must come from another dimension without linear time or something.

 

Saturn CD-R with SEGA code very easy, just use special bruner select raw data(sega code) burn in out side ring
PSX/PS2.....it very hard.....coz they use internal special master writer(CDW-900E and DVR-201) and they use PCM mode to burn special data on master disc

 

People have tried that but it doesnt work due to the way the data is organized, something to do with the fact that no cd drive reads past the actual game data.

 

1.need use offical cd layout burn and close disc section
2.burn sega code in out side ring(1 burner can do burn raw data when the disc is "close section"

 

Please explain the outside ring. I don't understand what you're getting at. Are you saying it's possible to create a master with Mirage Workshop that can be burned to blank media and boot without a system disc? Or are you saying Mirage Workshop + a special burner can write a Sega ring?