Sealedkey

The Sealed Key is a an encrypted key used on PS Vita, PS4 and PS5 to prevent files modifications. It can be found on different places in the filesystem and is used for Save Data and Trophy Data decryption and encryption.

The main application of a sealed key is to store a randomly generated secret which serves the same purpose as the klicensee in PFS encryption. It is used as a per-savedata/per-trophy key in PFS encryption/decryption whilst game data/additional content uses the klicensee.

PS Vita

Location

The sealedkey file is located in the sce_sys folder of every savedata/trophies. It is not PFS encrypted.

Structure

Offset	Size	Description	Value
0x0	0x8	Magic	"pfsSKKey")
0x8	0x1	Major version	always 2
0x9	0x1	Minor version	always 0
0xA	0x6	Padding	always zeroed
0x10	0x10	IV
0x20	0x10	Encrypted Sealed Key
0x30	0x20	Digest	?HMAC-SHA1 or HMAC-SHA256?

Usage

Generation

A sealed key of 16 bytes is generated randomly.

The sealed key is encrypted (using sceSblPostSsMgrEncryptSealedkeyForDriver) and written to the pfsSKKey file. The pfsSKKey__EncKey key (see [1]) is used as a AES128 key to encrypt the Sealed Key along with a randomly generated IV written at offset 0x10.

A Digest is computed from offset 0 to 0x30 using the pfsSKKey__Secret HMAC key (see [2]), and written to offset 0x30.

The save data files are PFS encrypted with this key.

Decryption

The first step is to check the digest of the pfsSKKey file by using the HMAC key pfsSKKey__Secret (see [3]) to check the Digest at position 0x30 in the file.

If it is correct, the sealed key is read at offset 0x20 and decrypted (using sceSblPostSsMgrDecryptSealedkeyForDriver). The pfsSKKey__EncKey AES128 key (see [4]) is used to decrypt the Encrypted Sealed Key at offset 0x20 along with the IV stored at offset 0x10.

The save data files are PFS decrypted with this key.