PS3 Hacked

[Nigel]

Interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12116051

 

[Mr Pants]

Good read. I genuinely wish I was a nerd that could hack!

 

[Jonny1*2]

Suppose :S doesn't mean much tbh. Once games start appearing the ps4 will come out

 

[paddymph]

Sounds complicated! To be honest I think the days of copied games are gone. I'd rather pay and get quality products and services, Xbox Live for example.

Maybe I'm just getting old?! lol

 

[Darren S]

I'm not wanting to sound all 'holier than thou', but it really pisses me off when hacking teams/individuals say that they don't condone such actions for use in piracy of games. s**t, really? So you create a universal key fob for cars that can unlock any motor and what, that wouldn't appeal to people who steal cars? You create a random pin-number generator that allows money to be withdrawn from ATMs using legit accounts, but with bogus cards. That wouldn't appeal to the typical thief?

You can't promote your work when the real reason for that work is going to be used for no good in the first place. Smith & Wesson might as well advertise their new armour-piercing .44 Magnum as a perfect way to kill ants from crawling up your garden path. But WhoTF would use it for that?

'Not me guv, honest' BS....

D.

 

[Mr Pants]

Hear what you're saying Darren. I think their would be a very big split in opinion in general. I think there will be some motive whereby hackers are displaying security fails and actually helping out companies in the future. I imagine a lot of the time though they are looking for bragging rights and trying to outdo each other, which doesn't exactly benefit everybody else lol.

 

[sn00p]

I'm not wanting to sound all 'holier than thou', but it really pisses me off when hacking teams/individuals say that they don't condone such actions for use in piracy of games. s**t, really? So you create a universal key fob for cars that can unlock any motor and what, that wouldn't appeal to people who steal cars? You create a random pin-number generator that allows money to be withdrawn from ATMs using legit accounts, but with bogus cards. That wouldn't appeal to the typical thief?

You can't promote your work when the real reason for that work is going to be used for no good in the first place. Smith & Wesson might as well advertise their new armour-piercing .44 Magnum as a perfect way to kill ants from crawling up your garden path. But WhoTF would use it for that?

'Not me guv, honest' BS....

D.

Sony (and all the other players) have created this whole mess themselves though. If they provided a legitimate way of running your own software on the console, it's unlikely that the people who have broken stuff like this would be interested in doing it, their motivations are not piracy but being able to use/tinker (run commodore 64 games!) with hardware which they own.

Sony could have embedded multiple keys (with multiple rights) in the device, one for commerical games, one for "home development", they seriously need to take a look at how apple deal with development.

I have zero sympathy for them. The original PS1 had a version called the "net yaroze" that wasn't exactly cheap (around £500 iirc) but came with development tools and allowed you to make your own software for it, even Microsoft have the XNA development programme which allows joe bloggs sitting in his bedroom to create the next angry birds.

Sony are arrogant and this should be a wake-up call.

 

[D4N13L]

I thought this was old news there are sites like blackcats etc that are membership only that you can download any ps3 game from. It sells a usb key that you plug in and it runs old software that allows the games to be played.

 

[PinkoCommie]

Sony (and all the other players) have created this whole mess themselves though. If they provided a legitimate way of running your own software on the console, it's unlikely that the people who have broken stuff like this would be interested in doing it, their motivations are not piracy but being able to use/tinker (run commodore 64 games!) with hardware which they own..

They really brought it on themselves by removing the OtherOS option. Until that point the tinkerers had no real need to be hacking the hardware to run anything else, as they could already do everything they wanted, such as build supercomputer clusters with them.

Now they have no path to get hold of PS3's with the ability to run Linux on them as all new PS3's will have the latest BIOS that do not have OtherOS capability. Therefore, they pretty much HAVE to hack it.

Sony could have actually made it harder for them by writing their encryption software properly though. It's all well and good fitting dead bolts and window bars on your house to prevent anyone breaking in, but if you leave the key in the lock, sooner or later someones going to take advantage of it.

 

[Darren S]

Sony (and all the other players) have created this whole mess themselves though. If they provided a legitimate way of running your own software on the console, it's unlikely that the people who have broken stuff like this would be interested in doing it, their motivations are not piracy but being able to use/tinker (run commodore 64 games!) with hardware which they own.

Sony could have embedded multiple keys (with multiple rights) in the device, one for commerical games, one for "home development", they seriously need to take a look at how apple deal with development.

I have zero sympathy for them. The original PS1 had a version called the "net yaroze" that wasn't exactly cheap (around £500 iirc) but came with development tools and allowed you to make your own software for it, even Microsoft have the XNA development programme which allows joe bloggs sitting in his bedroom to create the next angry birds.

Sony are arrogant and this should be a wake-up call.

I fully understand what you're saying, but why should they have to? I for one would love to get a few more BHP and the odd torque increase thrown in for good measure on my 182's ECU. But in no way do I think that Reno should feel compelled to enable me to do that in the first place.

Fair enough, if Sony provided the options initially in the early days of the hardware to tinker and then in recent months have clamped down on it - I can see why that would get peoples' backs up. But going behind the facade that such groups don't promote piracy is just a little too much for me to swallow. I don't believe for one minute that such groups would really be sugary-sweet and all innocent.

D.

 

[SamP]

I fully understand what you're saying, but why should they have to? I for one would love to get a few more BHP and the odd torque increase thrown in for good measure on my 182's ECU. But in no way do I think that Reno should feel compelled to enable me to do that in the first place.

Fair enough, if Sony provided the options initially in the early days of the hardware to tinker and then in recent months have clamped down on it - I can see why that would get peoples' backs up. But going behind the facade that such groups don't promote piracy is just a little too much for me to swallow. I don't believe for one minute that such groups would really be sugary-sweet and all innocent.

D.

Why did we climb everest? Why did we go to the moon? Why did we go to the south pole? Because we can. Just another thing that some people are compelled to do at the end of the day? Not being bitchy, just I guess it appeals to some people?

 

[sn00p]

I fully understand what you're saying, but why should they have to? I for one would love to get a few more BHP and the odd torque increase thrown in for good measure on my 182's ECU. But in no way do I think that Reno should feel compelled to enable me to do that in the first place.

Fair enough, if Sony provided the options initially in the early days of the hardware to tinker and then in recent months have clamped down on it - I can see why that would get peoples' backs up. But going behind the facade that such groups don't promote piracy is just a little too much for me to swallow. I don't believe for one minute that such groups would really be sugary-sweet and all innocent.

D.

I know it's a difficult thing to comprehend when the end result leads to making piracy easier, but honestly the people who cracked this were definitely not motivated by piracy. The group that did the initial work opted not to release the keys and only gave information on how they did it. Fwiw they're not too pleased that geohot released the keys because of how they can be used. Geohot certainly isn't interested in piracy either, but the release of the keys opens up many doors on the platform now.

I'm not suggesting that every device that contains a computer chip should suddenly become open source and tinkerable, that's not realistic, however, Sony were very arrogant in taking away a feature that many people used and did allow them to quite happily tinker in a little sandbox, they removed it in under the guise of "preventing piracy", well thats worked out well now, hasn't it?!

Like I said, Sony dipped a toe into homebrew with the yaroze all those years ago, Microsoft allow you to write games on the 360 through the XNA system. If you let people write software for the platform legally & cheaply then you take away all legitimacy from those who attack the system, as the only people left to do the attacking are the pirates.

Sometimes the best form of securing a door is to leave it slightly ajar.

 

[Darren S]

I know it's a difficult thing to comprehend when the end result leads to making piracy easier, but honestly the people who cracked this were definitely not motivated by piracy. The group that did the initial work opted not to release the keys and only gave information on how they did it. Fwiw they're not too pleased that geohot released the keys because of how they can be used. Geohot certainly isn't interested in piracy either, but the release of the keys opens up many doors on the platform now.

I'm not suggesting that every device that contains a computer chip should suddenly become open source and tinkerable, that's not realistic, however, Sony were very arrogant in taking away a feature that many people used and did allow them to quite happily tinker in a little sandbox, they removed it in under the guise of "preventing piracy", well thats worked out well now, hasn't it?!

Like I said, Sony dipped a toe into homebrew with the yaroze all those years ago, Microsoft allow you to write games on the 360 through the XNA system. If you let people write software for the platform legally & cheaply then you take away all legitimacy from those who attack the system, as the only people left to do the attacking are the pirates.

Sometimes the best form of securing a door is to leave it slightly ajar.

Good point. Making things too obtrusive just helps fuel the desire in people to break in. Area 51 would be more like "Area what?" if to the common public it, was nothing more than a desert-based airfield. Hyped up security just makes people naturally inquisitive. Again, if Sony provided the tools years ago, like you said with the yaroze system - then removed it; then I can see why people will get pissed.

D.

 

[ColinG]

Thread bump, anyone remember that game Rocks'n'Gems on the yaroze!

Jeez that was annoying / addictive lol

[video=youtube_share;Depda5L81ok]http://youtu.be/Depda5L81ok[/video]

 

[sn00p]

I never had a yaroze, I did have an early model PS1 with the expansion port which allowed direct bus access.....this coupled with one of those DATEL interfaces for cheating in games allowed you to run your own code.

I had all sorts of crap that I wrote running on the PS1, same for the dreamcast. I even wrote plugins for codewarrior that made it so I could use the sega development tools in a nice IDE.

Memories.

I also wrote an R-type style game in assembler (MS-DOS) without a debugger. That was fun. Might have to go to my parents and see if any of my old drives spin up and if I can find it.

 

[SharkyUK]

...in assembler (MS-DOS) without a debugger.

Happy days... it's almost too easy these days!

 

[sn00p]

Happy days... it's almost too easy these days!

Hell yeah, I love low level stuff....I guess that's why 95% of what I do is embedded.

The BBC micro is one of the greatest computers of all time - which reminds me, I must fix the power supply on mine because it went up in smoke before christmas. Yanky old capacitors.....

 

[SharkyUK]

Hell yeah, I love low level stuff....I guess that's why 95% of what I do is embedded.

The BBC micro is one of the greatest computers of all time - which reminds me, I must fix the power supply on mine because it went up in smoke before christmas. Yanky old capacitors.....

Yes, get that power supply fixed pronto! Sadly I do very little low-level stuff these days. The only time I delve into assembler is if I notice some weird performance issues and/or when I have suspicions about what the compiler is spitting out. I'd love a working BBC Micro.

 

[sn00p]

Yes, get that power supply fixed pronto! Sadly I do very little low-level stuff these days. The only time I delve into assembler is if I notice some weird performance issues and/or when I have suspicions about what the compiler is spitting out. I'd love a working BBC Micro.

Whenever I have to use an 8 or 16 bit compiler I always find a compiler bug.

 

[Darren S]

Yes, get that power supply fixed pronto! Sadly I do very little low-level stuff these days. The only time I delve into assembler is if I notice some weird performance issues and/or when I have suspicions about what the compiler is spitting out. I'd love a working BBC Micro.

Worth a punt m8, for the price of a half-a-tank of juice!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BBC-micro...pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item3f2f218145

D.

 

[SharkyUK]

Worth a punt m8, for the price of a half-a-tank of juice!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BBC-micro...pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item3f2f218145

D.

Mate... I am (and have been in the past) tempted to buy one. I just don't know where I'd put it when not in use as my cupboards and 'computer closet' are already full of retro gaming consoles, games, etc. But never say never...