PS Jailbreak Finally Hacks PS3 (allegedly)

[Ex-Cyber]

People like me with an un-matched BD-ROM drive may need it still

It'll probably happen, for that and other reasons. I'm guessing someone will at least come out with an lv2 multi-bootloader that will allow running various kinds of system utilities.

yo mel

YES! Now it's time to actually get one of these jailbreaking devices, not to mention find the stuff that he says I need in that article. I've not actually messed with it yet mainly because I had no reason to do it yet.

If you get a jailbreak device, don't pay full price for one. They're practically obsolete once the pieces get put together for the recent hacks, so you should be able to get one cheap if you decide you can't wait for an alternative method. Also, the exploit has been ported to enough general-purpose hardware (rooted Android phones, jailbroken iPod Touch / iPhone, USB-equipped TI-84/TI-89 models, etc.) that you might already be able to borrow something that can run it from someone

[Luriden]

I say hold off completely. People at PSX Scene are saying a jailbreak won't even be necessary from here on out once the pieces are put together. If there's any kind of modification needed, you'll be able to do it with any flash drive.

[DanteJay]

I first did a jailbreak on a friend's PS3 while I was visiting him in Mexico. I had bought a blackcat usb at90usb162 a couple of months ago when I first heard about the jailbreak. It was pretty easy to set up, but they'll need something more permanent with less hassle. Having to do a hard boot (shut off psu, and then turn on again), plus the having to press the eject button right after pressing the power button is annoying. Especially because you need a legit PS3 game inside the drive in order to boot games off the hard drive, and pressing eject always spits out your game.

I know this hack is still in its infant stages, but once they bust this thing wide open it would be awesome if the PS3 becomes the next Xbox 1, as far as emulation and media playing capabilities is concerned.

[DanteJay]

Wow, Sony really did suck at security. The PSP master keys have been found in the PS3 itself. Ouch.

LOL. That's an epic fail. Although, the PS3's security is very much like the security in the Xbox 360.

[DanteJay]

Did you see the video from the conference? It is much, much weaker than the 360. The hypervisor is used in a different way and may as well not be there.

360's is pretty strong really. The JTAG hack was more of a software bug and the fact it blows EFuses on some upgrade making downgrading almost impossible was a smart move.

I saw the old video where they were comparing the security, not this new one. At the time I believe the impression was that the PS3's security was similar to the Xbox360, and that the only reason the 360 was hacked (at the time) was because Sony let the homebrew community run Linux, whereas Microsoft didn't. I think the point was to indicate that the console hacks were not by pirates.

Microsoft did plan ahead more with the blowing of efuses. I sincerely hope that the PS3 is very much wide open for good. Hardware wise it is superior (mostly in the sound hardware, which is very important to me), so it would be nice if the homebrew scene kicked in to full gear on it. I will watch this video and comment later. Thanks for the info.

[Ex-Cyber]

The current hardware interacting are cracked for good. Future PS3's may get protected, but the most Sony can do right now is revoke keys which can easily be found again.

AFAIK they could block straightforward installation of CFW and use of homebrew apps with a firmware update (new key for firmware updates + only accept old app/game keys from HDD and original PS3 BD-ROMs), but it wouldn't be easy to get right and could still be bypassed by flashing the NAND/NOR using external hardware (e.g. what fail0verflow used for the live demo, which they've now pushed to their git repo).

[Luriden]

I'm only hoping Sony doesn't have a way of detecting and banning people making use of this. I'm excited to see what comes out of it but I can't do without PSN. I'd have to pick up another PS3 for all of this.

[Ex-Cyber]

I'm only hoping Sony doesn't have a way of detecting and banning people making use of this. I'm excited to see what comes out of it but I can't do without PSN. I'd have to pick up another PS3 for all of this.

Only time will tell for sure, but if CFW turns out to be helpful it ought to be possible to use their own hypervisor architecture against them to hide the CFW and soft-reboot into a stock Game OS with a "legit" partition for getting on PSN. Good luck finding developers both willing and able to program PowerPC at that level with enough confidence that they won't brick a bunch of PS3s, though...

[Stryfe]

Finally, OtherOS on PS3 Slim...

Although, I do hope Sony stops people with this from playing online with other non-hacked systems. It'd only lead to a level of cheating I've grown to despise in the PC, or hacked console, world.

[Luriden]

Playstation Home has the ability to see what applications you have installed with it's game launching feature. Anything that can be launched on your console is selectable. If Sony doesn't take note of this, all it takes is a patch for Playstation Home to filter what should and should not be on your installed app/game list, and it seems like that would be grounds for insta-ban, both on Home and PSN in general. Hopefully anything that's installed will be installed where Home can't see it. Otherwise we may have to stay away from Playstation Home.

[DaMadFiddler]

Otherwise we may have to stay away from Playstation Home.

How will we ever survive?

[Luriden]

Otherwise we may have to stay away from Playstation Home.

How will we ever survive?

I love Playstation Home. It reminds me of PSO's lobbies. I use it pretty much daily.

[DanteJay]

So I watched the video. I must say I laughed my head off at the part where they explained that Sony uses the same random number. That was certainly an epic fail. Also telling the system spit out it's own keys is just win. Private and Public keys known... Awesome!

Anyways, to my understanding, the only way Sony can really fix this is with new hardware. All PS3s currently on the market are hackable, and can run custom software regardless of what Sony does. Sony can make it more difficult, but cannot stop it. Check out the new video from GeoHot implementing the new hacks to run homebrew, by installing a homemade package right from a usb-stick on firmware 3.55:

[Eckostyle]

Tempting, but I don't want to do anything that has even the slightest risk of getting me banned from PSN.

[Specially Cork]

Please can someone send me a PM when they release a custom firmware capable of running homebrew and backups (PS1-PS3) that can be installed via USB onto an original 60GB PS3 with 3.55 firmware*.

Thanks and bye.

*Firmware version may posibly change when LBP2 and Beyond Good & Evil HD come out.

[Luriden]

Well, it's happened.

Sony Computer Entertainment America v. George Hotz

[DanteJay]

It's amazing, Geohot even specifically did not enable piracy. Retarded.

The sad truth is that it doesn't matter. Piracy or not, the main scope is that these guys intended to find ways of enabling things that Sony locked out (mainly Linux/Homebrew). However, in their pursuit, it didn't just end with the PS3 losing it's shirt, these guys pulled down the PS3's pants. Angered before, Sony is out for blood now.

[BlueCrab]

All I can say is that this will just piss people off even more at Sony, and draw even more attention to it. For instance, take David S. Touretzky, a Research Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.... He's decided to mirror all of Geohot's stuff related to the key release and all of his tools on his University webspace: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/

There's assuredly going to be many, many other mirrors of this stuff in the near future. All this lawsuit is going to do, initially, is draw attention and make people pissed. Draw attention, point out to people that the security has been compromised... What's that going to do? All I see it doing is drawing attention to the possibility of "free gamez" to the general public. Exactly the opposite of what Sony wants to do.

[Ex-Cyber]

There's assuredly going to be many, many other mirrors of this stuff in the near future. All this lawsuit is going to do, initially, is draw attention and make people pissed. Draw attention, point out to people that the security has been compromised... What's that going to do? All I see it doing is drawing attention to the possibility of "free gamez" to the general public. Exactly the opposite of what Sony wants to do.

The problem for Sony is that there's nothing they really can do, but they have to do something. ~5 years' worth of PS3 production is now owned. Hell, the factories are probably still cranking out exploitable PS3s right now.

[BlueCrab]

What I'm saying is that, I think they'd be better served to just try to sweep it under the rug, and deal with it from PSN by banning people. Fix the problem in new hardware, if possible, then deal with things from the online standpoint. Making a big deal out of it will only attract attention, which is not what they want to do (I'd think anyway).