Hacked Sony A7S?!

paulcurtis said:
I dunno if this is true

https://twitter.com/nabfathi15

I'll see if i can contact him. But he might just be collecting followers. In his biog he says he's 3rd AD on Iron Man 2 but he's on imdb as an uncredited extra... Hmmm.

He's obviously go something working though, but it might just be access to headers in the firmware. I'm surprised at the amount of english language in that code though, it ought to be obfuscated and have that kind of data stripped out.

I suppose there's a glimmer of light...

cheers
Paul
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That came up with his previous bogus claim the Olympus EM1 could shoot 4k. Right now it just looks like someone created a crude overlay. Until there's actual footage I'm skeptical. If it sounds too good to be true...
 
Has someone checked the dump for authenticity???

Now Twitter has erased its posts, so I think this is very real guys...
 
Also his vimeo video's are deleted. It was weird that he was twittering everything he had found out to the official sony groups. It is possible they contacted him and told him if he did not delete everything there will be lawyer actions or something.
 
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How can we give this guy more attention? He have 193k followers, and still nobody is interested
 
I think Nabil is sincere. People don't realize how difficult it is to hack a camera. What he's doing is giving you a peek at a work in progress. Whether he will ultimately be successful in improving the camera's functionality, is unknown at this point. Regarding the closed Twitter account, you can still see it by accessing the cached files in Google. I personally thank him for his hard work.
 
That dump just looks like c#. There's a huge difference between showing some code and actually getting a camera to do something else. That dump also includes log messages (most of it is logging) and i really cannot see any release firmware including human readable log messages, there's just no need.

The way these things generally happen is that the community as a whole pitches in to break down the task into smaller parts. That's what happened with Magic Lantern. But there's no way to contact this guy and offer help.

It just seems a little too, well, indistinct and 'mysterious' for my liking. I hope i'm wrong but i don't see anything that suggests new firmware with new functionality is physically possible. I was under the impression that it was encrypted anyway.

cheers
Paul
 
paulcurtis said:
That dump just looks like c#. There's a huge difference between showing some code and actually getting a camera to do something else. That dump also includes log messages (most of it is logging) and i really cannot see any release firmware including human readable log messages, there's just no need.

The way these things generally happen is that the community as a whole pitches in to break down the task into smaller parts. That's what happened with Magic Lantern. But there's no way to contact this guy and offer help.

It just seems a little too, well, indistinct and 'mysterious' for my liking. I hope i'm wrong but i don't see anything that suggests new firmware with new functionality is physically possible. I was under the impression that it was encrypted anyway.

cheers
Paul
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I think you've pointed out the biggest issue: he doesn't appear to be collaborating openly with anyone. Because you can run android apps on the phone, it would seem easier to get stuff working than with magic lantern. You'd still have to figure out all the correct hardware and software calls, but its a leap ahead of where ml started.
But all of that would be much easier if he was working with a team.
 
caseywilsondp said:
I think you've pointed out the biggest issue: he doesn't appear to be collaborating openly with anyone. Because you can run android apps on the phone, it would seem easier to get stuff working than with magic lantern. You'd still have to figure out all the correct hardware and software calls, but its a leap ahead of where ml started.
But all of that would be much easier if he was working with a team.
Click to expand...

Ah, but that android sub system gives very little access to the camera, it's all through a very restrictive API. I did contact Sony about whether it was possible to access the electronic focusing system, for a wireless FF but was told that simply isn't possible.

Whether there is a 'dark' api hidden in there with unfettered access i don't know but i would seriously doubt it. All the Sony apps are very slow and restrictive with what they can do.

What we're talking about is replacing the whole firmware, a layer well beyond that android system that talks direct to the hardware and *that* is a whole other kettle of fish in terms of size of project. We'd need to reverse engineer the whole firmware without any docs. And deal with encryption and god knows what else.

cheers
Paul
 
That is disappointing news, though I'm not sure how much I trust Sony reps, but if you feel its correct I'll trust your judgement.
 
I'll have a proper look tomorrow, but i still think this is about making play apps for the cameras. It's all java for starters, are you telling me that sony write their high performance encoding and image processing firmware in java? (like defining constants using a string...)

Plus his attitude on twitter comes across like a petulant child. I don't know any serious hardcore developers with an attitude like that!

cheers
Paul
 
I've had a look through.

As far as i can tell this is the state:

Sony have a public SDK for Camera Remote access, it's pretty restrictive but they support developers doing that.

Sony do not currently allow people to develop apps for the cameras though, these apps interface with the cameras API

What Nabil has reverse engineered is a way to develop your own apps, like the sony developed apps. The apps are difficult to install and also will get wiped on a camera reset.

These apps though are not hacked firmware, they all access to the cameras API. That API is across all cameras so features as XYZ may be noted in the SDK but the camera cannot do them.

This is not magic lantern, that replaces the low level firmware of the camera and hooks into the RAW stream before it gets debayered for the live view (this is what i understand but i've never used it).

I don't believe there are any SDK calls to access the raw data stream and even if there were, the android based environment the apps play in is very slow (have you used the timelapse app??). So the idea of sucking data through the api, compressing it and writing it back out through the api seems unlikely (but not impossible). You could poke codes at it and perhaps enable functionality that was previously 'hidden' (a la the F5 4K update) but there's no way to tell or know if any of the cameras are 'disabled' like that.

Access can be revoked by Sony at any time and it's not the most stable environment to work in.

As i said this doesn't appear to be reverse engineering the low level firmware, just a side ways access into it.

IMHO, i think if everyone petitioned Sony to allow 3rd party development of their apps then we'd see some real innovation. The first manufacturer to do that would enjoy a massive support of the community.

I think also if Nabil wasn't so damn defensive about everything and actually worked with people to document the SDK then this would be a lot more interesting and he'd be respected a lot more. His releasing of the source on the day of the A7sII just appears to smack of some kind of bizarre anti sony revenge thing going on... And his twitter comments are all so, well, not conducive to collaboration!


EDIT: I was looking at his twitter and now i'm blocked? Not sure if that's everyone in general, i don't see why he'd target me... oh well...

cheers
Paul
 
So, there is a glimmer of hope here that new functions could be enabled. Are you going to have a crack at it?
 
Ralph B said:
So, there is a glimmer of hope here that new functions could be enabled. Are you going to have a crack at it?
Click to expand...

I don't really have any spare time, but i will poke around to see what api functions there are, but then Nabil says that he hasn't released everything he has.

I may also have another go with Sony direct and see if there's any future movement on app development from 3rd parties.

If a new function was to be enabled, we're assuming the cameras were capable already. So for example to 'enable' Slog3 in the A7s i doubt is possible because Sony wouldn't have included anything to do with that in the A7s firmware.

Whether you could install an updated firmware which includes A7s and A7sII cameras and then retrospectively enable Slog3 i don't know. That's more plausible but right now that's imaginary. It's also something Sony should do anyway.

The whole point (IMHO) is whether the raw stream can be tapped into and there's no sign of that. yet.

cheers
Paul
 
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