Hacker Group Gives Video Tour of PS3 Security System

[RowdyRodimus]

And it's wrong to run custom code on a device because?

I think it's pretty cool that these guys have reimplemented a feature that Sony removed just to be dicks, as far as I'm concerned. One of the reasons I bought my PS3 was to run Linux as well. It was a selling point at that point in time. Then they removed it and made sure I'd never buy a Sony product again. It's simply not on to gimp a thing I bought and own just to be a dick.

I applaud there effort, but I have to agree with the guy you were responding to. However benign their intentions may be, their work will ultimately be used to pirate games on the PS3. It happens with every bit of hacking that's done. Once their work is complete they really don't care who gets their hands on it.

But, as long as there's security to be broken, there will always be people who want to try their skill at it. Hopefully, this doesn't result in some major move by Sony to refresh their security protocols on the PS3.

Pirating actually begins with making the game, therefore just stop making games and they won't pirate them.

Seriously though, did they buy the PS3 or obtain it legally to attempt to hack it? If the answer is "yes" then they have every right in the world to mess around with their own property. it's not like they secretly enter Sony's manufacturing facility and change things up so all PS3's are released hacked. People make way too big a deal out of things like this, the funny thing is the people that hate it are usually the ones who spend the most time saying "Don't take away mah liburtees" but then want you to be good little children for the big companies.

 

[RowdyRodimus]

Why cant these people just use the console for what it was ment to be used for?

In the end, all hackers no matter what conspire to use their hacks serving their on purpose in a matter not intended by the ones who made the product in the first place.

So i say, sue their asses broke!

If the creator of a product is given absolute control over how the product is used, and circumventing that control is made illegal, then the next thing you know putting tires made by, say, a Toyota daughter company on a Mercedes or replacing your car's speakers with different ones will land you in jail if the manufacturer finds out and feels like suing someone. Is that really how you want the world to work?

The difference between, say, a car and a machine that runs software is that just about everyone can download some programs from the internet on this machine, while not many people can create custom tires for their cars. There are manufacturers that can do that, but they can be controlled, while the distribution of software over the net cannot.

Yeah, i was gonna quote and answer this exact same thing.. But now i dont have to.

Just for the record, the car/console comparison was quite bad and off target imo.

I believe with the car analogy he was saying do you want to have a car that has to use parts that are specifically ok'd by the manufacturer? No, not everyone can make tires, but there are plenty of machinists out there that can make better tie rods for you than you can buy from a dealer, now if they used the above mentioned analogy and found you had a machined set of them that didn't come from their authorized dealer then they could sue you. (I'm not saying you were wrong in saying that the analogy wasn't perfect, but if you substituted tires for other things it's easy to see what he meant)

 

[Echo136]

I dont believe it. Hackers were trying to crack that console the moment it hit the market and to say that nobody had any interest in hacking it is a joke. Every other console on the market or ever was on the market has been hacked and they never used that pathetic excuse.

 

[Ghengis John]

So I know little to nothing about the situation, but when i bought my ps3 I merrily envisioned playing PC games on it like Civilization. Then they yanked the other os option while I was still waiting for the thing to come in the mail. With that in mind, can anyone with a grounding in the tell me how close am I now to playing civ 5 on my ps3?

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Pretty interesting technical stuff!

 

[pokepuke]

It is funny how bad the imaginations of some people are. There are plenty of reasons why they want to run a custom OS.

Yeah, they could use a PC. Or they could just use the consoles already attached to their televisions. The Xbox is widely known for being a great HTPC alternative, and once hacked can stream many video formats from a nearby computer.

Lots of people also use these hacks to copy their games from disc media to a hard drive, so they don't have to physically swap games all the time. This type of thing can lead to ease of pirating, but perhaps the console makers should develop a better solution that caters to the customers.

 

[Tron Paul]

Here's one reason to run OtherOS:
http://hackaday.com/2008/12/30/25c3-hackers-completely-break-ssl-using-200-ps3s/
Researchers used 200 ps3s to break SSL certificates (what encrypts your connection when you go to your bank or gmail), using a vulnerability in MD5 hashing. With this they were able to get a working fake intermediate certificate and could publish certificates that would say they were whoever they wanted to be.

Would everyone wanting to use OtherOS do this? No. But allowing for it lets people who want to use the hardware in parallel for cheap (relative to other hardware purchasing options) heavy number crunching do so. Remember the PS2 scare where people were worried that Saddam would buy lots of PS2s to make a missile guidance system? Since consoles are subsidized by the company (sold at a loss), buying them for computing is a good deal.

That and I wouldn't mind tooling around with a PS3 on linux. I'd bet it might make a decent platform to host a minecraft server.