Sony has released a downloadable new firmware (http://www.aii.co.jp/contents/smojsdmk/LIBRIE/UPLIBRIE_06160.EXE) (20Mb) for its Librie e-book reader.

Firmware V1.0.00.06160 contains some performance improvements related to dictionary access and sound output.

What is more interesting about this firmware upgrade is that it could reveal hackers some ideas how to directly access the software of the Librie, perhaps to replace parts of or even the entire operation system with a more "user-friendly", i.e. non-DRM system.

[VIA Librie list]

Indeed, roxfan already wrote the first firmware dumper (attached) which extracts the content from data.bin. The two resulting tar-gzipped files contain a kernel image and a cramfs image:

Librie firmware dumper 0.1
Expected versions: 1.0.00.04081 - 1.0.00.04201
Device name: EBR1000

Decoding version...done.
Decoding os1.tgz...done.
Decoding os1.tgz.csm...done.
Decoding os2.tgz...done.
Decoding os2.tgz.csm...done.
Decoding mstick.tar...done.

The CramFS image is mountable on linux with:

>mkdir /mnt/wfb
>mount -t cramfs -o loop cramfs.img /mnt/wfb

You need the cramfs file system kernel module enabled to do that.

V0.2 of the dumper is out (attached) which should now allow you to put the the dumped files back into data.bin (which is necessary if you want to flashupdate your changes).

Careful: this tool has not been tested yet.