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FOX T2 Hacking?

ChrisDaniels said:
I for one would like the same abilities and possibilities as has been achieved in the foxsat as I have stated previously.
Sure the content is encrypted, fair enough, so the main point of opening the box up is not possible (with this firmware), so what else can we do?

Well, we don't know until we can tinker with it!

What about fixing those annoying strings for starters such as "sort by date" instead of "sort by time"
Little things like that annoy me because its a basic mistake that should have been corrected in v1.01

Maybe we can start pooling ideas about what's possible, do-able etc.

What about a new portal selection page? More places to stream from? There's quite a few possibilities with the portal, but until developers can actually have a look and test, we won't know.
Click to expand...
i for one am glad you started this thread, anything that improves the box (legally) cant be bad:)
 
ChrisDaniels said:
What about fixing those annoying strings for starters such as "sort by date" instead of "sort by time"
Little things like that annoy me because its a basic mistake that should have been corrected in v1.01
What about a new portal selection page? More places to stream from? There's quite a few possibilities with the portal, but until developers can actually have a look and test, we won't know.
Click to expand...
I can tell you that the set top box software is one all-encompassing ELF binary. To change either of the things you mentioned, you're again talking about hacking Humax's proprietary software. Best of luck mate. Count me out.
 
So what do you suggest that we could do as extras to the box raydon?
I understand your stance on hacking the stb firmware but may I suggest take the iPhone as a modding example.
Jailbreaking allows so many more functions on the iPhone that apple dont allow as standard.
Jailbreaking has also now been classed as legal in the states too.
 
James said:
The only illegal thing is using the Windows HDF tool to remove the encryption of the hdf file. From that point on its fine.
Click to expand...

The HDF file isn't encrypted. Some parts of it are compressed, but that's all. I'm not even sure why they bothered with compression since the data that's in there isn't very compressible!

Anyway, I have a command line utility now which can extract from and create HDF files.
 
James said:
I wonder if this has a getty running on it?
Click to expand...

Not in the software build we have:

Code: 
# Put a getty on the serial port
# if debug
#ttyS0::respawn:/bin/sh
# else release
::once:/sbin/reboot /dev/null
/dev/null::respawn:/sbin/getty /dev/null
# endif

but easy enough to enable in a custom build.
 
ChrisDaniels said:
Af123 have you managed to create a hdf to give yourself root access like raydon yet?
Click to expand...

No, I've been away so haven't had much time to look at it yet. I have finished the program to handle HDF files now and I tried creating one with a telnet daemon and putting it onto the Humax, but no success. It appeared to flash correctly but it isn't listening on port 23 and nor are the telltale directories I asked it to create present.

Like you, I suspect that it has something to do with the 32 byte type 128 blocks that appear after each file (which tools like WinHDFTool interpret as separate files even though they aren't). They are probably some sort of checksum so we won't get much further until we work those out.

Does anyone have any insight what they are?
 
Regardless of the legal issues (which nobody is going to track people down about anyway) - just as long as no big company gets pissed off for legitimate reasons or not

One thing that i'm planning on working on is getting the portal screen to redirect to other web services like SwissCenter (www.swisscenter.co.uk) which gives a much better graphical interface to network stored media.
Second thing that is going to be nice is to try and add some more codecs to the box - I know it has hardware decoding built into the chip, but a 450MhZ MIPPS whould be able to software decode a lot anyway and as the problem seems to be containers more than codecs this should hopefully not eat up much processor time.......
Clearly getting a C lib and compiler onto the HD would also be nice as it will save cross compiling!
 
I agree about the legal issues. It's only really the big players like Sony that sue lol well, so far..
There are ways to keep yourself anonymous in the web, that's how the hacking and modding scene exists!

I hope someone manages to crack this soon !!
 
Does anyone have any idea if a MIPS emulator or virtual machine could be used to test any changes on ?
I can't find a MIPS virtual machine but there seem to be some emulators around.
 
I'm interested in the legal issues of modifying the Humax.
As far as I understand it - so long as I add code into the Humax there's no legal problem.
If I do "clean room" reverse engineering, then that's also ok.

Now I'm interested in being able to set the humax to record programs remotely.
This would require interfacing with the database on the humax. Whilst I wouldn't need to reverse-engineer the code I'd need to understand the table formats. Would this be legal ?
 
Using a Slingbox is another way of doing that, albeit pricy unless you would make use of its main purpose to watch recordings on your Humax from anywhere in the world.
 
Maybe pose the question to Humax themselves and see what they respond with.
Someone there will be reading these forums and will know the score.

As I understand it, they want to protect their IP assets (their code). As long as this is not put at risk, I can't see an issue. Humax could even take a mod like this and publish it in with their official firmware (they have stated in the past however that this would be unlikely).
 
mwillett said:
I'm interested in the legal issues of modifying the Humax.
As far as I understand it - so long as I add code into the Humax there's no legal problem.
If I do "clean room" reverse engineering, then that's also ok.

Now I'm interested in being able to set the humax to record programs remotely.
This would require interfacing with the database on the humax. Whilst I wouldn't need to reverse-engineer the code I'd need to understand the table formats. Would this be legal ?
Click to expand...

Interesting question. However, since it's Linux-based then it's covered by the GPL which means all the source code has to be made available (as you can't use GPL code in proprietary code - all the code is covered by the GPL). Of course, any individual, standalone, executable files could be closed source and only the OS being open source so it depends where the code you are interested in lives.
 
mwillett said:
This would require interfacing with the database on the humax. Whilst I wouldn't need to reverse-engineer the code I'd need to understand the table formats. Would this be legal ?
Click to expand...

I think the database is just SQLLite so there wouldn't be any reverse engineering of the storage format required, just what the fields mean and how the table relationships work.
 
ChrisDaniels said:
As I understand it, they want to protect their IP assets (their code). As long as this is not put at risk, I can't see an issue. Humax could even take a mod like this and publish it in with their official firmware (they have stated in the past however that this would be unlikely).
Click to expand...


I wonder why Humax aren't going to add this feature - surely the ability to set your humax to record something whilst you're down the pub would be a great marketing point ?
 
af123 said:
I think the database is just SQLLite so there wouldn't be any reverse engineering of the storage format required, just what the fields mean and how the table relationships work.
Click to expand...

So, as long as I only query the table formats/contents then its legitimate reverse-engineering. Is that right ?

I've still got to work out how to create the hdr/squashfs files so I can get ssh/telnet up and running.
Then can look this. I expect a lot of problems along the way.
 
@mwillett, You misunderstood.. i didnt say they wouldnt with regards to a remote record feature, but rather a mod made by a user and given to Humax to publish..
 
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