Decades later, an external workaround for the Sega Saturn’s robust DRM

Given enough time, and enough focused ingenuity, any copy protection method can probably be circumvented. For the latest evidence of this truism, look no further than the Sega Saturn. A hacker has developed an external, plug-in solution that lets the two-decade-old system play games off a generic USB drive, without the need for heavy internal hardware modifications like a soldered, hard-to-find mod chip or a full disc drive replacement.

The news comes via this fascinating 27-minute video that outlines how a hacker going by the handle Dr. Abrasive spent years looking for a way past the system's particularly robust disc-checking scheme. To prevent regular old CD-Rs from working on the system, Sega had the Saturn disc drive check for a microscopic "wobble" pattern etched into the outer edge of the game disc itself (a CD-R's pre-set spiral pattern makes replicating the pattern with a regular CD burner pretty impossible).

In addition, the Saturn has an extra CPU dedicated exclusively to handling the CD sub-system. Before now, that CPU has been a frustrating black box for hardware hackers; they could send commands and get data, but they couldn't decipher its inner workings to try to develop a workaround. Even opening the chip up to examine the ROM via microscope failed, thanks to an implant ROM process Sega used in creating the chip.

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Source: Opposable Thumbs – Ars Technica http://ift.tt/2a77YCa