chimera-gfx-Public/docs/runtime/phase-0.9e-r2-siecaf-structural-analysis.md

Phase 0.9E-R2 SIECAF structural analysis

Date: 2026-07-19

Result: all pairwise comparisons are SIECAF_LAYOUT_DIFFERENT.

Evidence and scope

tools/inspect_siecaf_header.py is a host-only read-only parser. Its fixed little-endian layouts are bound to:

• PS5 DevWiki Archive.dat structure documentation;
• c0w-ar/ps5-bar-tool commit 36d014672bc87577a6e0d750c2cccadc3fae0854, tree d3e973b60432fdc32bd16e3b7424e82dcc38a23f;
• public include/bar_file.h blob fdbc368353a7797464873ada306f0297257eb95e.

The public header names the 64-bit value after the magic unknown, and the later signed 32-bit field version. Versions 3 and 6 were observed and are parsed using that same public fixed-width layout. Other versions fail closed.

The parser reads only the 0x58-byte header, 0x40-byte metadata records, and 0x30-byte hash records. It never decrypts, guesses keys, extracts content, executes ps5-bar-tool, writes output files, or opens a network connection. The 16-byte header field named key by the public source and the complete raw header are not emitted; only their SHA-256 fingerprints are recorded. This preserves exact structural comparison without committing cryptographic header material.

It checks exact magic, table arithmetic with uint64 overflow guards, table and declared-data bounds, 64 KiB alignment, coherent aligned/unaligned sizes, metadata (section_id, part_number) identity, hash-table index coverage, duplicates, overlaps, gaps, and trailing data. Repeated section IDs with different part numbers are reported but are valid multipart records.

Header comparison

Field	Local	Official Y2JB 1.6 4.03	owendswang v1.4 autoloader 7.61
inner size	504365056	504496128	504627200
version	3	3	6
segment count	62	64	58
data offset	65536	65536	65536
declared data size	504299520	504430592	504561664
header SHA-256	4454809c9831770901491368f08b648129aef7ee3148aff17df8716ff3a5cd76	1af2bd937e5b6a2386331893f7ea1295661858cb91c90ee728141a4fec2dbf9b	db2a9677f051b372e208261d767ac45f653374426a5594ce3306568138ebd3ae

All three parse as SIECAF_VALID_STRUCTURE. None has gaps, overlaps, trailing data, duplicate metadata composite keys, or duplicate hash-table IDs.

Normalized fingerprints

Object	Segment table SHA-256	Hash blocks SHA-256	Layout SHA-256	Structural SHA-256
local	ee35a92fe5e46c307310715fc5bd0edb9ac46c2046b7d77e9c1c437446e399ea	6e052f186dc8e683d501e376d79dcec1ba0d3268c257b6071e96eae738a7be24	c6dac8313ef99accba68b4a36871f0d8ae99676df0b721d4447ecb05a12a6539	7bb1b70187d1f48370b9bae218429af79105585bd043307824c0d84982e6922f
official	d31def8e731d7bba0eaf23177f7c7245ef17f5d37ade53c9ca18744154bc8e25	c3236f5d85a4d7741be5a1fda5ce96d2bb7f005b0e48fed043af5ea48fb045d2	de6cc47686e5e301b725267b9b777c80a07a788e51f214cfb6e9d7f6e2e11110	9c453e1fa99ef1f1e6fe1d992f9b0a2ede4dbd4b9a2ad8551c08c8c61ed9be2a
community	f0aed4ae115866010902671a511983c3e6e21d1a7ab187bae7f36566979beb89	434b209865af8c5815b1277073db59348fddf65086908b2fd00dee5324459bcb	be7fdf87361c17fa52d3b4b263f4ee0cce69e924f8dab0ab66c554b4d9557549	4884c54e280969371ae1d0b84533be5a7c50a61dff6931cf595fdb5862655218

Pairwise outcomes:

• local versus official: SIECAF_LAYOUT_DIFFERENT;
• local versus community: SIECAF_LAYOUT_DIFFERENT;
• official versus community: SIECAF_LAYOUT_DIFFERENT.

manifests/runtime/phase-0.9e-r2-siecaf-fingerprints.json contains every non-secret normalized input field, metadata record, section hash, redacted header-field hashes, parser warning/error array, and comparison. Structural hashes are non-authorizing fingerprints: even SIECAF_STRUCTURAL_EXACT would not prove decrypted-content identity or deployment. Here, not even normalized layout equality exists.