PS5 Hack: Incoming keys for the mysterious CP chest?

Scene developer Zicoxao Add some information to The ‘CP Box’ page on the PS5 Dev Wiki todayHe stated that hackers are working to extract some of his encryption keys. Little is known (publicly) about this PS5 development accessory, though it’s possible that the official PlayStation development studios know more specifically what they’re doing.

What is PS5 CP Box?

The CP box is a black box with a USB C input, a USB C output, an ethernet and a power cable, which connects to the test kits. Its exact purpose is not known on the scene, but there are theories.

There are two modes that CP Box can run in “Engineering Mode” and “Normal Mode”. In engineering mode, the CP Box simply plugs into power, using the PS5’s USB-C cable. In normal mode, the CP Box USB-C port is connected to a USB-C portable hard drive, the Ethernet is connected to the network router/hub, and the USB-C cable is in the ps5. (Source)

PS5 CP Box images are starting to appear very close in the console’s life cycle, with some images already leaking before the actual console’s release. Unfortunately the internet is what it is, a lot of the original sources have disappeared, but this article is on Twisted voxel Copy of photos. They assumed at the time that this might have been the console’s SSD.

Early speculation also included a “Breakout Box for PS VR”, the current interpretation of the scene being that this box could be used to enable a Dev mod on PS5 Test Kits, and/or possibly to verify account/hardware activation on Sony DevNet. From the PS5 Dev wiki:

Although it is not known at the moment what exactly the CP box is – it is to enable dev mode on test and development suites. Possibly the Ethernet connection is for online activation check on DevNet? And a usb hard drive maybe for packages? or games?

Or maybe it’s related to the communications handler similar to the PSVita’s, maybe it’s just an external version of it? I do not know ;-;

the PS5 Dev Wiki mentions That these CP boxes may not be required for DevKits (test kits only), and the functionality may be built into Dev Kits.

DevKit’s Network Control Center (NCC) page doesn’t mention a “CP box” which appears to be included in it instead

Personally, I like this educated guess from Farncone user reddit:

Since the “test suite” is a regular PS5 instead of a V-shaped development kit, and this little box has network indicators and an RJ-45 jack in it, it could potentially facilitate a network test scenario like a PSN for PS5 games that aren’t yet enabled. Developers will have to test their functionality online in a closed testing environment. The network usually has a PROD and DEV side for fully tested production/commercial games, and a development side. This looks like a box to enable network testing in a DEV environment – and will allow them to do so using the real PS5 test model.

And this follow-up by doctorlongghost on the same thread makes sense to me, too:

The only thing that comes to mind for this is that it can be used to throttle the internet. I’m a web developer and all major browsers come with IDEs that let you intentionally slow down your internet so you can test your code to see how it performs on slower networks (such as 3G/4G cell). So this could be something like that. To intentionally allow developers to slow down or break the console’s network connection.

Test Automation Site Suite.st says they support PS5 Devkits and TestKits, for testing automation of HTML-based apps (I guess media apps like Netflix, Disney+ et al. might have some HTML-based pages?). on them PS5 help page, they mention CP Box. So it might make sense for the box to be here to test various network conditions through throttling mechanisms.

How is CP Box related to PS5 Hacking?

It is unclear if CP Box can be useful for PS5 Hacking. It’s very possible that the PS5’s firmware doesn’t inherently trust any accessory it plugs into, but it’s also possible that an official Sony component has a higher level of trust than other hardware.

Either way, it wouldn’t stop the Reverse Engineers from trying, at least to extract as much information as possible from the box. Zecoxao reported today that hackers are looking to extract some keys from the device’s firmware. He stated that the keys will be posted on the PS5 Dev wiki as soon as they become available.

The CP Box firmware key is currently being retrieved. Once successful, the keys will be published to the wiki

– Control_eXecute (notzecoxao) January 28, 2023

Whatever comes out of this, stay tuned for more details!

References

• https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/je2dfq/leak_of_ps5_dev_hardware_includes_mysterious/
• https://playstationdev.wiki/ps5devwiki/index.php/CP_Box
• https://www.psxhax.com/threads/ps5-cp-communic-processor-box-playstation-5-dev-prototype-images.9995/
• https://suite.st/docs/devices/playstation-5/
• https://twistedvoxel.com/ps5-black-dualsense-controller-testing-kit-images/