Sony NEX/Axx Firmware hacking

[rdrr]

Nex-5n here.

UART0 shows the following just after the camera is reset for a firmware update, haven't gone further as it won't be possible to revert to older firmware once I do:

E
Uncompressing Linux.......................................................... done, booting the kernel.

relevant FirmwareUpdater.log

Haven't looked at UART1 or JTAG yet (crash course welcome on JTAG, have not used it before)

Also booting with BOOT_MODE_1 high results in no serial output and the SD card light flashing on and off at about one second intervals. Not sure what it's waiting for here.

[Thomas Hondema]

I have been doing some research couple of months ago and i want to continue when i have the time (~mid june).
I backed up all of the fw version so if anyone is interested pm me

[richg101]

A comparison of the VG-20 and other NEX camera FW's would be handy i'm sure in adding clean hdmi to the nex 5n, and nex 7. VG-20 allows clean HDMI and shares very few tecnical differences apart from case size. hardware is near identical

[FeSantacl]

you are right

[xenogears]

Just clean live view HDMI in Nex5n is my only real request, that, and a Sound Devices PIX 220 can make the NEx5n a little great FS100 ;) at $2500, obviously this will kill the VG20 for good.

Ahhhh.. dreaming..

[rdrr]

Did the firmware update, no other output on UART0 unfortunately.

Seems to just send the entire .dat file through in chunks, not much more. Full FirmwareUpdater.log can be found at http://www.4shared.com/archive/du-Kt...l?refurl=d1url

Not sure where to go from here.

[someone1.00]

Just want to heat up the thread.
The firmware is a single tar in ustar format with standard initrd.img, vmlinux.bin, rootfs.img, standalone libraries and something that manufacturer calls scenarios. The last one are probably UI description. They are gzipped. Files starts with ESFf and has esf extension.

[rdrr]

I can't find the ustar/gzip header anywhere in the FirmwareData*.dat. How are you extracting these files?

[xxakep]

Just want to heat up the thread.
The firmware is a single tar in ustar format with standard initrd.img, vmlinux.bin, rootfs.img, standalone libraries and something that manufacturer calls scenarios. The last one are probably UI description. They are gzipped. Files starts with ESFf and has esf extension.

How firmware is encrypted?

[someone1.00]

I can't find the ustar/gzip header anywhere in the FirmwareData*.dat. How are you extracting these files?

I don't say anything about gzip headers or even it's signature in firmware. And it's not a secret that FirmwareData_user_xxxxxxx_loader.dat is not a firmware itself. Its a container and even encrypted firmware file lay inside it not in a simple way. And sure you will not find any plain text in crypted firmware.
About encryption. I cannot tall anything about it at this moment.