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Sony Idle Games

PS3 Hacker Claims He's Jailbroken 3.60 Firmware 176

Posted by samzenpus from the what-took-so-long? dept.
Wesociety writes "Not one week ago Sony released a new PlayStation 3 firmware update which implemented cloud-saving for its PlayStation Plus subscribers and featured some understandably secretive behind-the-scenes security features meant to prevent future hacking. Today, a hacker is purporting that he broke firmware 3.60 and posted a video to prove it."
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PS3 Hacker Claims He's Jailbroken 3.60 Firmware More

PS3 Hacker Claims He's Jailbroken 3.60 Firmware

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  • Unbreakable? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Drakkenmensch ( 1255800 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @11:37AM (#35518266)
    The more you increase your security to keep hackers out, the more feverishly they'll work to take down what they see as a challenge.

    • Re:Unbreakable? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by abigsmurf ( 919188 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @11:50AM (#35518480)
      The more hassle it is to play catchup, the less people who'll use firmware hacks for piracy. Sony don't have to win, they just have to put up a fight.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

        yea that worked well for the psp

        • The PSP got broken at a fundamental HW level and it happened to allow a mod that didn't require any soldering.

      • The more hassle it is to play catchup, the less people who'll use firmware hacks for piracy. Sony don't have to win, they just have to put up a fight.

        Also worth noting that Sony absolutely will not give up on this when the teams involved in blocking these hacks can justify a blank cheque budget by scaremongering their bosses with notions of limitless piracy.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Hassle? What hassle? Maybe I'm naive (I'm not), but the best hackers that actually crack this stuff are not normally major players in the piracy scenes. They do it for the lulz and the notoriety.

        I busted my PS2 years and years ago trying to solder something in. That was a hassle. Then not 3 months later someone released a softhack that runs off a USB stick. Got a new machine and it works perfectly ever since. First-run hacks are a hassle. Wait long enough and somebody will put together a GUI auto-installer.

        • I busted my PS2 years and years ago trying to solder something in. That was a hassle. Then not 3 months later someone released a softhack that runs off a USB stick. Got a new machine and it works perfectly ever since. First-run hacks are a hassle. Wait long enough and somebody will put together a GUI auto-installer. There's got to be some kind of internet rule for that.

          Really what happens is that there is something enabled by rooting the machine that isn't possible without it, e.g. running Linux or Myth TV or whatever. So somebody finds a way to root the system, and once that is possible, people start writing programs to do those things.

          Once you have e.g. Myth TV PS3 edition, lots of people want to run it, so someone creates an idiot proof installer to automate everything. And from then on, every time there is a new hack, the authors just paste it into the section of code

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        The more hassle it is to play catchup, the less people who'll use firmware hacks for piracy. Sony don't have to win, they just have to put up a fight.

        It depends. Some hacked firmware requires starting from a hacked firmware, so you have to install a patched one, then upgrade. As long as you can install the old revision, you're set.

        Others you just install the hacked one as a regular update, in which case you do it as a regular firmware update.

        And people will jump through all sorts of hoops to pirate - as lon

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )

      That only works until they have all their holes plugged. See Xbox, homebrew on Xbox1 was extremely popular, homebrew on Xbox360 has a far harder time, as it doesn't work at all with modern Xbox360 and even with older models requires hardware modifications and that is with a console that has been on the market for five years. Sony will certainly have learned their lessons with PS3 and PSP and won't make the same mistakes again. So I wouldn't count to much on hackers breaking the security of whatever comes ne

      • Are you sure?

        Just because they seemed to do a good job THIS time is no guarantee that they will do a good job NEXT time!

        Whenever you release new hardware or new software it's a fresh opportunity for mistakes to be made.

        It's just as probable that the next generation consoles will not be significantly more secure than this generations are.

        • Re:Unbreakable? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Drakkenmensch ( 1255800 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @01:25PM (#35519948)

          It's just as probable that the next generation consoles will not be significantly more secure than this generations are.

          True, just listen to what these companies say about their current gen being hacked beyond hope but the NEXT gen being "too hard to crack THIS time"... it always ends up like Doctor Klaw waving his armored fist and yelling "I'll get you next time, Gadget, NEXT TIME!!!"

      • Sony previously avoided the war entirely. Having Other OS kept a great deal of hackers at bay. The problem was a few too many restrictions and tinkers who wanted more power. They would have left the security intact had the system not been crippled from the OtherOS.

        Sony should have left well enough alone, fixed the hole, allowed access that people were looking for, and retained Other OS. The war would have quickly fizzled.

        As it is now my family gripes every time the thing requires an update to connect an

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        And yet, piracy is rampant on the xbox 360 thanks to the ability to flash the dvd reader...

        In fact, there is very little reason for piracy on the ps3, most games are available for the 360 so anyone serious about pirated games will have already gone down that route years ago. It's not really worth the cost of a ps3 for the very limited number of exclusives, even if you save the price of the games themselves by pirating them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by grumbel ( 592662 )

          And yet, piracy is rampant on the xbox 360 thanks to the ability to flash the dvd reader...

          Yeah, but piracy is a quite different thing then homebrew. The thing with piracy is that it is hard to stop, the binaries are signed and official after all, so as long as you can somehow get the bytes into the machine, be it by hacked DVD firmware or whatever, you are fine and the pirate copy will run. Homebrew is much harder as even when you can get the data to the machine, it will simply be refused due to an invalid signature and working around that can be anything from quite tricky to being pretty much i

          • Piracy is the excuse those companies are giving for putting all that DRM into our throats. If it doesn't stop piracy, why are they botering?

            And, yes, the question was rethoric.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dgatwood ( 11270 )

              For anyone who doesn't know the answer and is thus confused by your comment, if the numbers I've read are correct, Sony brings in $7 per copy for every game from every publisher.

              Thus, Sony stands to lose lose somewhere on the order of half a billion dollars per year if developers find that they can practically develop games for PS3 without paying the royalty fee.

              • Thus, Sony stands to lose lose somewhere on the order of half a billion dollars per year if developers find that they can practically develop games for PS3 without paying the royalty fee.

                And if that happens there's pretty much no point in Sony even making a console at all.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by grumbel ( 592662 )

              Piracy is the excuse those companies are giving for putting all that DRM into our throats. If it doesn't stop piracy, why are they botering?

              As far as physical media goes, both PS3 and Xbox360 are still DRM free. They contain copy protection and they make it impossible to run your own code, but they don't actively do DRM for their Blurays and DVDs, which is why selling a used PS3/Xbox360 game is still possible, while selling a Valve game is not.

              Now of course in the next generation that might change, it shouldn't be that hard to just stick a serial number onto DVD or Bluray and Internet as a requirement might sooner or later happen as well.

              And wh

          • Homebrew is much harder as even when you can get the data to the machine, it will simply be refused due to an invalid signature and working around that can be anything from quite tricky to being pretty much impossible.

            Hard yes, but never impossible. Question: What would stop somebody from spoofing a valid signature?

            • A lot of math on hard crypto.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by grumbel ( 592662 )

              Hard yes, but never impossible. Question: What would stop somebody from spoofing a valid signature?

              The time to crack a proper signature is in the millions or billions of years, i.e. completely impossible for practical purposes. The reason why Sony got into trouble is because they failed at their crypto and forget to put random numbers into it. You could of course try to change the keys stored for the verification in the machine, but that could quickly become completely impractical as well, as you might need to dig trough layers of epoxy or drill into some chips or whatever. The reason why it worked in t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hAckz0r ( 989977 )
        In security circles it is a well established fact that if someone gains physical access to a system then you can't trust its security. That is Sony's problem. Any purchaser of any gaming system HAS physical access, and nothing can prevent them from gaining access to the internals of the system, both electronic and software. Anybody that suggest that software can protect itself from a well determined hacker is just blowing smoke and is right on par with an old time snake oil salesman. Even if Sony embedded t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by grumbel ( 592662 )

          The thing is: They don't have to make it 100% unhackable, they just have to get close enough to make it completely impractical for a regular person. If its no longer about using a hacked savegame and instead requires a microscope, digging through epoxy, unsoldering chips and corrode away the chip chasing, you can be pretty sure that homebrew won't be all that popular anymore.

        • There's always going the OnLive route - basically, don't give people physical access, just give them a thin client.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        That only works until they have all their holes plugged. See Xbox, homebrew on Xbox1 was extremely popular, homebrew on Xbox360 has a far harder time, as it doesn't work at all with modern Xbox360 and even with older models requires hardware modifications and that is with a console that has been on the market for five years. Sony will certainly have learned their lessons with PS3 and PSP and won't make the same mistakes again. So I wouldn't count to much on hackers breaking the security of whatever comes ne

      • That only works until they have all their holes plugged. See Xbox, homebrew on Xbox1 was extremely popular, homebrew on Xbox360 has a far harder time, as it doesn't work at all with modern Xbox360 and even with older models requires hardware modifications and that is with a console that has been on the market for five years.

        If you mean non-Microsoft supported homebrew then yes, but why would you need that when MS actively supports homebrew on their platform?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by grumbel ( 592662 )

          If you mean non-Microsoft supported homebrew then yes, but why would you need that when MS actively supports homebrew on their platform?

          XNA is a very limited platform. Yes, you can do games on it. But you can't do a Linux on it or just recompile your favorite mediaplayer for it, i.e. the things where homebrew is commonly used for.

    • That is the entire point of hacking in general, to satisfy curiosity. At least true hacking.

      • That is the entire point of hacking in general, to satisfy curiosity. At least true hacking.

        In most cases like this, its esteem and bragging rights and not necessarily curiosity.
        It is a nice side effect when people can have proper access to the devices they purchase but unfortunately it also has the negative side effect of seriously damaging honest users online gaming experience, especially when all the cheating begins.

    • The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems slip through your fingers.

  • According to Mathieulh, Sony is smart: they're let you log into PSN if you are using the old authentification method from 3.55... and flag you as a thief. http://twitter.com/#!/Mathieulh [twitter.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      Why would you log onto PSN with a modded console?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        * Netflix
        * Multiplayer gaming

      • Because you want the latest DLC.

        And you're an idiot.

  • Am I going to get sued (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tigger's Pet ( 130655 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @11:42AM (#35518338) Homepage

    Is Sony going to come after me for reading TFA? Do we now need to start incorporating "Caution: Reading the following article may result in you being sued to the ends of the earth" logos over the top of stories?

  • Ah, this again. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17, 2011 @11:45AM (#35518384)

    Someone spotted the fact that his debug loader properly connected to a PC, apparently something that retail PS3s, no matter how hacked they are, can't do. So for the moment, looking like a fake; basically a debug unit on the latest debug firmware.

  • This is why we can't have nice things! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tr3vin ( 1220548 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @11:51AM (#35518486)
    As a PS3 owner, I am getting a bit tired of all the jail-breaking. I get that people want to mess around with the hardware, but almost none of this work goes towards something new and useful. I've yet to see any work on some killer applications or games the PS3. I went through the same stuff with the Wii. Everybody talking about the great homebrew scene was but there was barely anything more than emulators. Sure, there were a few new games, but they weren't anything that fantastic. Then, Nintendo felt it necessary to update the bootloader for the Wii, bricking people's unhacked consoles. The PS3 isn't looking much different. All of this talk about being free to do what you want with the console, but people end up just getting their games for free. If you are going to hack the console, at least make it look like you are doing it for a worthwhile reason.

    • It's a war of attrition now, one that Sony started by taking away the OtherOS option for no real reason. Then the really smart people that wanted to hack the console for fun or use it for Linux work or clusters or whatever fixed that issue, and then all the script-kiddie hangers-on took it and ran with it after it was broken. If Sony hadn't fired the first shot, they wouldn't have these issues.

      I don't feel sorry for Sony one bit. They made their bed, and they can lie in it.

      • Wasn't it started by using OtherOS to crack the system to which Sony then responded by removing it in an unforced update (if you didn't update you kept your precious OtherOS)?

      • Let's talk about an outdated blog.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by harl ( 84412 )

        Sony had a very specific reason for removing the OtherOS option.

        They took away OtherOS because they lost the EU import case. Once the EU ruled that PS3s were not computers and subject to higher import tariffs supporting OtherOS became an expense they didn't want to pay.

    • The best thing on the homebrew scene for the Wii are the media players. It's nice to be able to play videos from my network share on my TV without having a dedicated computer in my living room. I'll agree with you about everything else though. I guess anybody who's really serious about developing homebrew games will just make a WiiWare game. Same goes for XBox, they have XNA for the indie developers. Maybe that's the reason you don't see any quality homebrew. Because people have a better avenue to mar

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You can't have nice things because you gave Sony money, one of the worst companies on this planet. And then you sit and bitch about the people who are trying to use the hardware the way they choose? Holy fuck man, people like you are the reason we can't have nice things Tr3vin

    • I get that people want to mess around with the hardware, but almost none of this work goes towards something new and useful. I've yet to see any work on some killer applications or games the PS3.

      I'm afraid that the PS3 is already too complex platform for homebrew individuals/groups to make anything useful for. Even if you had all the specs you'd probably need commercial-level development power to finish stuff.

  • you cannot get sued by sony if you don't buy a ps3 (Score:3)

    by Dan667 ( 564390 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:12PM (#35518852)
    vote with your wallet.

    • vote with your wallet.

      By the numbers:

      49 million consoles sold. 69 million PSN accounts. 17 million PlayStation Home social networking accounts. 4 million MOVE controllers.

      The PS3 Fat has been out of production for almost three years.

      Each new video game sold , Blu-Ray video, MOVE contoller or online service like Netflix is a vote for the firmware upgrade.

      Of course the geek can still vote with his wallet.

      But so can everyone browsing the latest in HDTV, home video and console gaming at Walmart.

  • Does this mean you can jailbreak a PS3 that is on stock 3.60 or is this just a custom firmware based on 3.60 that you can install from one of the earlier jailbreakable versions?

  • Debunked (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FLEABttn ( 1466747 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:26PM (#35519090)
    He's running a dev unit. 3.60 has not been jailbroken. This was non-news when this video surfaced two days ago because it was debunked mere hours later. Glad to see Slashdot posting articles in a timely fashion.

    • That may be true, but that's what they said when those initial USB jailbreaks came out. That method juked the PS3 into going into debug mode. Maybe this joker found another way to do that?

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