'Regular' PS3 gamers who've cancelled credit cards? You FOOLS! The appearance of a Sony PlayStation 3 firmware hack will only affect hardware modders, according to a gaming security expert. Chinese hacker group BlueDisk-CFW has published a tool that circumvents the console's firmware. This was followed by the release of "LV0 decryption key." The decryption keys allow PS3 firmware packages …
and I buy games regularly as normal - but I'm looking forward to when the PS4 is released and this console becomes obsolete - at that point this work that is being done to crack it will mean it can still have a meaningful life.
Mine's the one with a free for all open PSN network for out of date hacked PS3s.
PSN could introduce a challenge response step to sign on, e.g. md5sum this range of firmware, or this file on disk, or the value of some string, or the sector of a disk your'e playing from. Wrong response gets you booted off and flagged. Flagged accounts can be stuck in a honeypot, ban hammered or treated in any way Sony wants. Games can do their own second level checks along similar lines, reading certain sectors from disk, checking in-memory signatures and whatnot.
It should also be feasible to bloat up the size of blu ray disks with encrypted content, garbage, duplicate content etc., to force all ISOs to be 30GB or more. This alone would seriously dampen interest in piracy because nobody wants to be downloading a massive isos or juggling them because only 10-20 of them even fit at one time on a hard disk.
the problem with that is from the PSN point of view you ask a device for a md5sum of a file and it returns a string - at the center you've no idea if that was a genuine md5 being performed or if it was simply hacked software returning the string you want. Even if you supply a salt with each challenge all a hacked device would need to do is have a copy of the "good" file in a secondary location.
> I don't think it's a problem at all. Sony's engineers could craft a test that they *know* fails on modded firmwares. The possible ways this could happen are endless....
That kind of optimistic handwaving is generally only seen when parliament discusses economic prospects.
"That kind of optimistic handwaving is generally only seen when parliament discusses economic prospects."
Er, no. Say CFW vX.Y is released. Sony engineers can install it in a lab, craft a dozen or so challenges which fail on the CFW but not on original firmware. They can cycle the challenges as they see fit and ban people dumb enough to log in using it.
It's straightforward enough to do. How do you think Microsoft wields the banhammer against modded consoles? Through similar means. No optimism is required, just thinking the problem through.
"It's straightforward enough to do. How do you think Microsoft wields the banhammer against modded consoles? Through similar means. No optimism is required, just thinking the problem through."
You've not done much security engineering, have you? I'm getting a bouquet of "can't you just..?" that reminds me of pointy hair. Rule one, you need to be smarter and more ingenious than your adversary- not less.
Don't care. Never buying a $ony PS product again.
After owning an original PlayStation, PlayStation 2 (fat & slim) and 5 PS3's as well as an extensive library of original games, they lost my vote and my loyalty when they removed my right to choose Linux on my test-bed unit, forced Cinavia DRM on my systems and filled it with third party video and music apps that you can't turn off from the XMB.
Not all of us are pirates, I've never played a pirated game on my systems and I resent the implication that I would do so. Some of us have other uses for the hardware we own but we don't have the right to do what we want with it, but as the supplier $ony apparently has the right to restrict my hardware without my express permission and cut me from PSN if I don't comply with the latest firmware terms and conditions.
I hope they crash and burn.
Wow, you have a serious case of self-entitlement, don't you?!
Linux was dropped because it was hacked by a third party and would have made piracy simple. Blame the 3rd party, not Sony.
As for the Cinavia DRM, it doesn't appear to affect gaming performance and is only an issue if you have pirated videos - since you are complaining about it, perhaps you do?
As for the 3rd party vdeo apps, I'm quite happy to have netflix, 4oD and BBC Iplayer on the XMB - so maybe it's just your apparent belief that the entire PS system exists for your personal benefit that's the problem here.
Good luck running Linux on your new Wii U.
Perhaps he wants to create backup copies of his legitimately owned disks, which is perfectly reasonable. Or perhaps you sympathise with the sense of entitlement displayed by Sony and the media industry in general, that demands you repurchase the same products whenever a new format is released.
Maybe he has a Laserdisk or HD DVD collection? Or he bought Sony's crappy UMD movies....Or maybe he buys them from the Chinese guy down the pub? To block playback of content like this - pirated or not = Not many people that know this are going to buy these devices anymore. If I want legal content, I can stream it to a media player.
" my loyalty when they removed my right to choose Linux on my test-bed unit...."
No they didn't. They removed the right for you to access THEIR system if you had Linux installed. You didn't HAVE to to take the firmware update, you CHOSE to to it, so you could stay on THEIR network.
In a similar manner I have chosen not buy any more Sony hardware. They decided what I could use my hardware for, after the fact I had purchased it. These decisions have implications. Sony are no longer trusted enough to provide hardware and services. Generally speaking, if I can avoid Sony, I will.
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