TI-83 Plus OS signing key cracked

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2009/08/17 @ 9:41 am
Category Craft

Looks like it might be possible to run other OSes without additional software on the TI-83…

The ever-mysterious Benjamin Moody posted a cryptic message on the United-TI forum yesterday. In it, he listed the factorization of the 512-bit RSA modulus used by TI’s OS signing key for the 83+ (the “0004 key”). No other details are yet available about how he achieved this feat of substantial brute forcing power. In the event of United-TI downtime, Brandon Wilson has put a copy of Benjamin’s values on his personal website.

With this achievement, any operating system can be cryptographically signed in a manner identical to that of the original TI-OS. Third party operating systems can thus be loaded on any 83+ calculators without the use of any extra software (that was mentioned in recent news) Complete programming freedom has finally been achieved on the TI-83 Plus!

BY Phillip Torrone

Editor at large - Make magazine. Creative director - Adafruit Industries, contributing editor - Popular Science. Previously: Founded - Hack-a-Day, how-to editor - Engadget, Director of product development - Fallon Worldwide, Technology Director - Braincraft.

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3 Responses to TI-83 Plus OS signing key cracked

Hans on August 18th, 2009 at 12:42 am said:

Maybe try learning to read? Despite your claim it is very well documented how this was done, just a few postings down the thread.

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Phillip Torrone on August 18th, 2009 at 10:05 am said:

@hans – re-read the post, i quoted ticalc.org… it’s not “our” claim.

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Nony Mouse on August 28th, 2009 at 7:46 am said:

This news seems to have sparked an interesting phenomenon – the reddit/etc., articles about this post, and several mentions in blogs, seem to be rapidly disappearing from the Internet.

Perhaps the numbers
5,174,413,344,875,007,990,519,123,187,618,500,139,954,995,264,909,695,897,020,209,972,309,881,454,541

and

1,325,290,319,363,741,258,636,842,042,448,323,483,211,759,628,292,406,959,481,461,131,759,210,884,908,747.

have some qabalistic power to unleash an Internet vacuum cleaner…

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