The entire raw NCAs are encrypted.

The only known area which is not encrypted in the raw NCA is the logo section, when the NCA includes that section. Everything else documented on this page is for the plaintext version of that data.

Encryption

The first {at least 0xC00 bytes} are encrypted with AES-XTS with sector size 0x200, at least 6 sectors in total. Everything in this region uses same keydata.

Header

Offset	Size	Description
0x0	0x100	RSA-2048 signature over the 0x200-bytes starting at offset 0x200 using fixed key.
0x100	0x100	RSA-2048 signature over the 0x200-bytes starting at offset 0x200 using key from NPDM, or zeroes if not a program.
0x200	0x4	Magicnum "NCA3"
0x204	0x1	0 for system NCAs. 1 for a NCA from gamecard.
0x205	0x1	Content Type (0=Program, 1=Meta, 2=Control, 3=Manual, 4=Data)
0x206	0x1	Crypto Type. Not known to be used on retail systems, with <v3.0 at least. Normally 0. 2=Unknown added with 3.0.0.
0x207	0x1	Key index
0x208	0x8	Size of the entire NCA.
0x210	0x8	titleID
0x21C	0x4	Version value? Compared with a required minimum-value.
0x230	0x10	Rights ID (Ticket)
0x240	0x10*0x4(0x40)	Table for each section, see below.
0x280	0x20*0x4(0x80)	Table of SHA256 hashes, over each 0x200-byte Section Header Block.
0x300	0x10*0x4(0x40)	Key area

The header is 0x400-bytes, at NCA+0.

When the above "Crypto Type" field is 0x2(?) on >=v3.0, different {crypto/keydata} is used for the sections' data. With system content, this is used with every ncatype except ncatype0. The only other exception is {data-content} for the firm titles: this is required in order for older-system-versions to install it.

Section Table Entry

Offset	Size	Description
0x0	0x4	Media offset
0x4	0x4	Media end-offset
0x8	0x4	Unknown
0xC	0x4	Unknown

Entry size is 0x10-bytes.

Media offset is absoluteoffset/{mediasize}, where mediasize is hard-coded to 0x200.

Section Header Block

Offset	Size	Description
0x0	0x1	?
0x1	0x1	?
0x2	0x1	?
0x3	0x1	Filesystem type. 0x2 = PFS0, 0x3 = RomFS, everything else is invalid.
0x4	0x1	Crypto type. 0 and >4 are invalid. 1 = none(plaintext from raw NCA). 2 = other crypto. 3 = regular crypto. 4 = unknown.
0x5	0x1	Padding?
0x8		FS-specific superblock.
0x100	?	Optional BKTR header. Can be used with any section, but only known to be used with game-updates RomFS.

The Section Header Block for each section is at absoluteoffset+0x400+(sectionid*0x200), where sectionid corresponds to the index used with the entry/hash tables.

The total size is 0x200-bytes.

PFS0 superblock

Offset	Size	Description
0x8	0x20	SHA256 hash over the hash-table at section-start+0 with the below hash-table size.
0x28	0x4	Block size in bytes.
0x2C	0x4	Must be 0x2.
0x30	0x8	Offset of hash-table. Normally zero?
0x38	0x8	Size of hash-table.
0x40	0x8	Offset relative to section-start where the PFS0 header is located.
0x48	0x8	Actual byte-size of the PFS0 filesystem relative to the PFS0 header.
0x50	0xF4	Normally zeros.
0x144	?	0x1?
0x148	0xB8	Normally zeros.

This documents the structure of Section Header Block +0 for PFS0.

RomFS superblock

Offset	Size	Description
0x8	0xE0	IVFC header. Basically the same as Savegames IVFC except with 2 more levels and +0x0C is non-zero, see below.

This documents the structure of Section Header Block +0 for RomFS.

IVFC

Start	Length	Description
0x00	4	Magic ("IVFC")
0x04	4	Magic Number (0x20000)
0x08	4	Master hash size?
0x0C	4	Usually 7? Unknown, could be related to total number of levels maybe?
0x10	8	Level 1 offset
0x18	8	Level 1 size
0x20	4	Level 1 block size, in log2
0x24	4	Reserved
0x28	8	Level 2 offset
0x30	8	Level 2 size
0x38	4	Level 2 block size, in log2.
0x3C	4	Reserved
0x40	8	Level 3 offset
0x48	8	Level 3 size
0x50	4	Level 3 block size, in log2.
0x54	4	Reserved
0x58	8	Level 4 offset
0x60	8	Level 4 size
0x68	4	Level 4 block size, in log2.
0x6C	4	Reserved
0x70	8	Level 5 offset
0x78	8	Level 5 size
0x80	4	Level 5 block size, in log2.
0x84	4	Reserved
0x88	8	Level 6 offset
0x90	8	Level 6 size
0x98	4	Level 6 block size, in log2.
0x9C	4	Reserved
0xA0	32	Unknown, reserved?
0xC0	32	Hash

BKTR

Start	Length	Description
0x0	0x8	Offset
0x8	0x8	Size
0x10	0x4	"BKTR"
0x14	0x4	u32, must be <=1.
0x18	0x4	s32, must be >=1.
0x1C	0x4	?
0x20	0x20	Same as the above 0x20-bytes except with different data.
0x40	0x4?	?
0x44	0x4?	?

Using this header is enabled when offset 0x8 in this header is non-zero.

The above byte-offsets are relative to the start of the section-data.

The two sections specified by the two BKTR entries are usually(?) at the very end of the section data(section_endoffset-{size of BKTR sections}).

Logo section

This is a PFS0. See here for the mounted-FS logo contents.

ExeFS section

This is a PFS0.

See here for mounted-FS ExeFS contents.

PFS0

Offset	Size	Description
{Hash-table offset from superblock}	{Hash-table size from superblock}	Table of SHA256 hashes.
{Hash-table <offset+size> from superblock}		Zeros for alignment to {alignment size}.
{PFS0 offset from superblock}	{PFS0 size from superblock}	The actual PFS0.

This is the FS which has magicnum "PFS0" at header+0. This is very similar to HFS0. A tool for extracting this FS is available here.

The hash table is hashes for every {Block size from superblock} starting at the PFS0 header. The size used for the last hash is {PFS0 filesystem size from superblock} - offset_relativeto_header.

NCA

Contents