Sony Blocks Hacked PS3s From PSN

[oldtaku]

Well really, this seems reasonable. They should have just done this in the first place instead of repeatedly crippling the console. Go ahead and use your hacked PS3s offline, just not on our network.

 

[Wolfram23]

As one of the few who supports Sony in this, I say: Huzza!

While I agree, I think it's good news, I still think Sony needs to put Other OS back on the system.

But, it's nice to take some ammo away from certain fanboys of certain other consoles. Ever since this news cropped up I hear arguments every so often of how online on PSN is now broken due to hackers. I lol.

 

[dnadns]

That's fine in my book. The CFW revived my second PS3 which has a broken blu-ray drive and actually let's it be useful in the household instead of going on to the dump.
I mean, let's be honest here, if you are really interested in homebrew stuff or coding for the PS3, then you are not really sad if you can't access the PSN from that console.
No, I don't consider "backup" games to be a valid reason to either install CFW or connect to the PSN with it.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

1) I'm sure it will take all of a week or two before someone finds a way around this. Clearly, this is a good use of Sony's time and money and is totally worth further alienating a portion of their consumers.

2) It's awfully hard to make any reasonable argument against being able to jailbreak PS3s so far as I can tell. Maybe you can get away with it with other devices, though I tend to think it's a hard sell and companies need to shift focus away from preventing people finding other legitimate uses for a device and toward people using the device in a way that actually causes problems (punish people for pirating, not for giving themselves the ability to pirate that happens to also be the ability to do a fuckton of legitimate things). But Sony promised features and then just said "lol nevermind". A lot of people are literally just finishing the work Sony decided not to do.

 

[bladester1]

This is why I'll most likely never mod any of my devices. I prefer forgoing some benefits for the consistency of my devices working as they should.

And that way if a patch bricks the console, they can't blame it on stuff you put on it.

 

[Digikid]

Sony is fighting a losing battle. I support the hackers. Why? Simple.....if I want to hack my PS3 then that is my choice and mine alone as long as I am not breaking my countries laws.

Go to it hackers. Fight for your freedom and drive Sony into the dirt where they belong.

P.S. I do own a PS3 and no I do not hack it.

 

[Danpascooch]

...
None of this shit is easy, but now that people have a taste of a fully hacked PS3, they aren't going to stop, it's amazing what people like this can do anyway.
...

heheh.. Yeah I know this is nowhere near being a complete solution, I just think it's a very clever one. I think the completeness level of the ban would probably depend on the level of hardware data collected server-side at the time of a failed cross-check. I'll be honest and say openly that I have no idea what is actually going on in the whole process of the rootkit detection/checks, and I'm sure Sony wants to keep it that way. But I also think that it's entirely possible that not only a users PSN account is banned, but also the specific console hardware itself could also potentially be banned too. It would all have to be dependant on what data was collected at the time of the failed crosscheck though. Like serial numbers, MAC addresses, that sorta thing.

If that's the case, then the challenge of hacking that one specific console would get harder and harder with each attempt.. It's an interesting thing to think about.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as they're checking something that can be edited with firmware, it's not going to stop it, no matter how elegant or complex the check is.

 

[Asehujiko]

I don't understand Sony's reaction to all of this.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but perhaps the worst thing that can happen is piracy.

However, downloading a PS3 .iso file would take... well, quite a long time.

I think that waiting for it to finish would scare away a lot of potential 'hackers'.

Haven't you heard? When 100 people buy your game and 100 people download your game you make less money then when 100 buy your game.

At least that's what all the anti pirates claim. And if you need an explanation on how the hell that works you are obviously a pirate because everybody that isn't terminally evil knows that, duh!

 

[mjc0961]

Okay yes. THIS is what you do, Sony. This is actually helping. Keep those people from playing online and ruining the games for paying customers. Keep fighting them this way and maybe I'll start taking you seriously as a company again.
This is where you should stop though. Suing people that you screwed out of a previously advertised feature isn't the answer to anything. Either put Install Other OS back in (don't say you can't because of security, look how unsecure your platform is now) or just leave them alone as long as they don't go online and fuck up online games for people who are trying to play normally.

I wonder how long it will be until hackers get around this one, though.

 

[TechNoFear]

It would all have to be dependant on what data was collected at the time of the failed crosscheck though. Like serial numbers, MAC addresses, that sorta thing.

If that's the case, then the challenge of hacking that one specific console would get harder and harder with each attempt.. It's an interesting thing to think about.

Anyone capable of generating an algorithm to bypass these security checks is also capable of spoofing (impersonating) a range of fake IDs (probably using a external device like a PC) and never using their legit ID (so no risk to their actual PS account).

 

[Narcogen]

Expensive? I thought PSN was free. Doesn't that mean no one is losing anything?

These kinds of measures are reasonably effective on XBL, since banning consoles causes people to lose access to a service for which they have paid, and incurs them additional expenses if they wish to regain access to these services.

 

[Cheefa_Da_Reefa]

oh well good thing i got two ps3's one for sega/nintendo and blue ray movies and another one for actual gaming

 

[Asuka Soryu]

I'm with the hackers on this one. For a company like Sony to disable functionality that users have paid for looks a lot like fraud to me. I can see how having large numbers of hacked PS3's on PSN would be bad for PSN, but I say Sony has no one to blame but themselves.

You don't pay for PSN. It's free, the moment you entered PSN you agreed to their terms of service. And by doing so, you allowed them to target you and your hacked console.

 

[Dooly95]

I'm with the hackers on this one. For a company like Sony to disable functionality that users have paid for looks a lot like fraud to me. I can see how having large numbers of hacked PS3's on PSN would be bad for PSN, but I say Sony has no one to blame but themselves.

You don't pay for PSN. It's free, the moment you entered PSN you agreed to their terms of service. And by doing so, you allowed them to target you and your hacked console.

I'm guessing he meant Other OS.

I don't know. Is it clever? I don't care too much because I don't play any online multiplayer games on the PS3 (partly because of slow, unreliable connections, mostly due to the Internet Anonymous Douchebag theory) and I never bought the PS3 to run Linux in the first place. So, all this is really not that great big of a deal (aside from having to update the damn machine from time to time, but..).

I really don't know. I'd like to sit on one side and support Sony or the pirates, but neither side looks right. Sony, for taking away something that they promised, and pirates, for essentially taking something that cost $x to make and taking it for free.

 

[katsabas]

There is one huge hole, for my part, in the hackers' logic. They kind of stopped trying to hack 360s where you have to pay membership and started finding ways to cheat online on PSN which is free.

Hackers can jump off a cliff for all I care. Even though Failoverfl0w and Geohot said that the hacks would be used only for installing new software, they cannot guarantee that the rest of the hackers will give in or not and use the keys to get free games. I couldn't care less for Linux. If I had the keys, you think I would try and install it?

And why should I pay for a title while these guys get games for free? Cause they have a vast knowledge on PCs and stuff? Ok, I still remember a lot of Physics for circuits and power. Does that mean I should get free electricity?

For real, fuck them. For trying to get off cheap, cheating online, messing with my game-time online and ruining the experience and forcing me to constantly update just because they CAN hack the PS3. I hope Sony gives them a hard time.

 

[Andrew Ricklefs]

and this is y i dont mod.

 

[Retosa]

Honestly, this isn't going to last. First of all, all it takes is creating an algorithm that generates the same responses as the new firmware when pinged by the PSN servers. They've got the part of the firmware that generates the response to the pings, all they need is to figure out what signals come in that generate what signals going out. Literally, all you'd have to do is have your PC 'imitate' the PSN and send signals to a PS3 with the real firmware, and have it record responses to everything sent, and have the program recording generate an algorithm that would create the proper responses to the proper input signals. It's like brute force cracking a password, it takes time, and patience, but with enough data and the code, a fix will be made.

As for testing it, make a couple fake PS3 accounts, try them out, and spoof your MAC address (for added protection, have your router run your connection through a proxy), and everything's nice and protected. Sony is fighting a losing battle. And you know what? I'm happy.

I haven't modded my PS3. But I hate the idea of LICENSING my PS3. I want to own the damn thing if I'm paying for it, not license it. And I hate the idea of someone else having control over what I can and can not do to stuff that I should OWN. Intellectual Property has gone too far and is absolutely ridiculous. It's controlling and ONLY benefits corporations who can afford the proper lawyers to keep people in line. A lot of people involved in this are doing it as much to fight the system, as to get extra functionality on their system, or even pirate.

Just because the hacks CAN be used to pirate, doesn't mean that's the MAIN reason for them. There are LOTS of reasons why people hack. Ninety percent of hackers do it for the challenge and status, and those are the good ones who actually get shit done. People have said it here, and it makes sense. It's more effort to actually spend the time working on hacking the system than it's worth to just avoid paying for a handful of games. Imagine how many man hours and how much time must've gone into hacking the PS3. Then think of how many games you could've played in those hours. How much overtime you could've gotten for working those hours, and putting that $$$ into games.

You won't stop the hackers, because they're after the challenge, rather than the 'free games' and the 'piracy'. They want to be able to open the system up so they can play with everything that they can involving it, fiddle with the system and the OS, and everything involving it. This leaves it open to the pirates to do their thing, yes.

The fight is lost, the end is neigh. Weep.

 

[Arkitext]

Sony Blocks Hacked PS3s From PSN

Having your cake and eating it - also known as hacking your PS3 and still going online - has suddenly gotten very expensive.

Hackers are a resourceful bunch, and despite Sony's best efforts to stop them, they've still found ways to connect to PSN, even with jailbroken consoles. But now it seems that those halcyon days are over, as Sony has patched the holes in its fence that were allowing hackers to get in.

This isn't the same thing as Microsoft's annual sweep [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96037-Microsoft-Bans-up-to-One-Million-Xbox-Live-Accounts] for modded Xbox 360s, as Sony doesn't seem to be blacklisting consoles. Instead, it appears that Sony has fixed the exploits that were allowing owners of hacked and jailbroken PS3s to use PSN. There were apparently two main methods of getting online with a hacked console. The first method involved manually changing the domain name server settings on the PS3 and routing authentication requests through a web server with a hacked verification file. The second method was similar, but diverted the requests to a proxy server via a PC instead.

Sony seems to have been able to render both methods ineffective. PS3 hacking forums are suggesting that people with jailbroken consoles do one of three things: buy a second PS3 and use it for going online, get rid of the hacks and update to the latest firmware, or wait it out and hope that someone comes up with another way of getting online. None of them is an ideal solution, obviously, but that's the risk you take - or one of the risks, at least - when you jailbreak your PS3.

Source: Game Politics [http://www.gamepolitics.com/2011/02/09/sony-blocks-hacked-ps3s-psn]




Permalink

Hahahaha.

 

[VirusHunter]

I did some more reading on the subject and apparently this isn't the first time it's happened with the technique these people use to access PSN. They've fixed it before, it's only a matter of time til they fix it again.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

What was this supposed to accomplish again?

The jailbreaking, I mean.