Just an example: The gamecube was hacked by an information leak exploit. A crc feature the Phantasy Star Online game allows to request checksums of arbitrary memory positions (and sizes).
So it was possible for the smart guy who did it, to create a complete memory dump from
remote. In that case your magic values are worthless...
Which hack? The PSO-upload hack on the Gamecube is vastly different from tmbinc's truly embarrassing (for Nintendo) hack on the so-called crypto.
In short: All communication between the serial chip holding the BIOS and the Gamecube's flipper-chip is two-way. Naturally, if a chip is only interested in receiving data it will shift out garbage. What tmbinc found out was that when the encrypted data was shifted to the Flipper (for decryption) the _decrypted data_ was shifted back.
Since the encryption was nothing more than a XOR-seed from a PNRG it was trivial to XOR the encrypted BIOS image with the decrypted data and get access to the whole XOR-key (starting seed always the same) and thus it's trivial to produce BIOS replacements.
I agree that this is an information leak, but PSO has very little to do with it. I do not consider the PSO-upload hack to be a hack of the Gamecube, but tmbinc's retrieval of the BIOS encryption "key" certainly is.
We're straying off topic. Further off-topic discussions in mail.
regards, Troed
