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Hackers mock the Sony PS3
THE CHAOS Communication Congress in Berlin has been having a few laughs at Sony's expense.
The hacker conference has been looking at Sony's Playstation 3 (PS3) and found that in comparison to other consoles it is a doddle to knock over. They discovered that the PS3 has all sorts of security vulnerabilities.
One of them involves dongle-less jailbreaking by breaking the PS3 loaders, giving complete control over the system.
Perhaps more importantly, due to some botched security they found it was possible to calculate the public private keys, giving users the ability to sign their own software and load it into the PS3.
PS Groove, which was at the conference, said that it declared Sony's PS3 security to be an epic fail.
The recent exploits mean that current PS3 firmware is vulnerable, v3.55 and possibly beyond. It will be very difficult for Sony to fix the described exploits.
Most of the efforts of the hackers are to force Sony to go back to the good old days when it allowed Linux to operate on its games consoles. Sony pulled the feature because it feared that would be used by hackers to do all sorts of nasty things with their machines.
What it looks like has happened is that by withdrawing the ability to run Linux from the PS3 Sony has drawn attention to itself and the hackers are wading in accordingly. µ
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So this brings an interesting question to mind, does SONY have the right to tell you what OS you can run on hardware you own? I could see it if you leased it kinda like a cable TV box. The 9 core cell chip from IBM is used in the PS3, Xbix and Wii so i guess you could just as easily convert one of those into a mini rocks cluster. The USAF just connected a bunch of PS3 units to make a HPC I wonder if they had to hack any.
"and it was very secure for a long time"
The only reason it was secure is that the real hackers (Linux users, not amateur piracy hackers), were happy, they had no need to hack it.
If you watch the video of them explaining the exploits on youtube, you'll see that they also explain that, from the point Linux was removed, it took about as long to hack as most other consoles.
The lesson? Don't piss off Linux users.
I'll start by reminding you that one of the rules of the Internets is to not type in caps as it is considered rude and/or ignorant. It's also awful to read and takes up excessive space compared to properly typed text.
I would also like to add that while you are half right as to the comment you made about the reasons for 'hacking' a system, it's also done to open a system for other reasons like home written apps and games (Homebrew) as it was the case with the PSP's. I would have thought/hoped that Sony could have seen the potential their open systems had for diversity and ingenuity and how the sales could have improved too. Alas, it's left to hackers/coders to open these systems up only for Sony to make a new revised main board or new model altogether and at the same time they see fit to get rid of good features like 'Other OS' and back-wards compatibility with all those favourite titles you kept because they were classics you could play again with the release of a new instalment (Metal Gear Solid to name one of many).
Come on Sony, wake up! Just an idea but why couldn't you have made an app that could rip PSX games for the PSP if you had the original disk, were on-line and the catalogued disk numbers were not already in use eh? You would sell far more than you have so far.
Wow what a load of ignorant comments..
First off, people want to run linux on the ps3 for several reasons. Have you ever heaRd of the broadband chip in the ps3? It is more useful on parallel procesing than in games. Plus with linux you get the chance to create a super computer with playstations. Anyways, fast forward to now. Amd and nvidia are now providing the gap that sony/toshiba didn't want to fill. Thanks to opencl and cuda it eases the need to buy playstations for computational tasks. Do you think sony ever learned their lesson from linux? No they never offered at least a hybrid laptop, at least for virtualization.
YEAH GOOD FOR THE CRACKER/HACKER GUYS, I WATCHED THE VIDEOS & READ THE COMMENTARY, IT SEEMS THE PS3 IS WELL & TRULY CRACKED NOW. ON THE OTHER HAND, WHATEVER THE HACKERS DO MUST BE EASILY DETECTABLE (WITH THE OS UPDATE THAT YOU KNOW IS COMING) SO THEY WILL BE BANNED FROM PSN. SO: YOU GET TO RUN PS3 LINUX EVEN ON YOUR SLIM, BUT YOU STILL WONT BE ABLE TO RUN PIRATE GAMES ON PSN. BIG YIPPEE. I USED TO HAVE LINUX ON PS2, RAN IT LIKE TWO OR THREE TIMES & FINALLY DITCHED THAT PIG ON FLEABAY. PS3 LINUX, NEVER WAS INTERESTED. MY POINT IS, PLAYSTATION MAKES FOR A POOR COMPUTER (AND LINUX A POOR O.S.) & THE ONLY REASON TO HACK AROUND CONSOLES, REALISTICALLY, IS TO RUN PIRATED GAMES.
OH, YOU ACTUALLY WANTED TO RUN LINUX ON A PLAYSTATION? GIVE ME A BREAK.
SERIOUSLY THOUGH, THESE GUYS KNOW THEIR STUFF AND HATS OFF TO THEIR KNOWLEDGE. MAYBE THEY COULD BE CHARGED UNDER DIGITAL MILLENIUM ACT, WHO KNOWS. TAKES A LOT OF BRASS TO SHOW OFF LIKE THAT.
I SAY, BUY EM OFF LIKE EA DID WAY BACK WHEN WITH KEVIN PICKELL (FOR EXAMPLE).
IT LOOKS LIKE FORGETTING TO RANDOMIZE THE KEY PROPERLY COULD BE THE END OF THE PS3, HOWEVER, THAT (AND THE REST OF THE VULNERABILITIES MOCKED) SHOULD BE RELATIVELY EASY TO CORRECT FOR PS4 ETC.
"sony has learned a valuable lesson."
hardly, sony has carried on in this manner for about 20 years now.
and it was very secure for a long time, these recent exploits have taken ages to surface, i still dont see anyone generally running software on the platforem utilising the hypervisor.
Before Sony decided to angered people by backtracking on its claim that the PS3 hardware can be used with different operating system, the PS3 remained relatively secure & hacks for it were limited both in scope and availability at best.
Now sony have rubbed their clients the wrong way, because some people actually bought the PS3 to use with linux rather than play games.
The flood gates are now open & sony has learned a valuable lesson.
Who knows, maybe this will even boost sales, seeing as how playing copied games on the wii is so easy & the wii outsold all the other consoles a few times.