Speculation About PSN Outage Turns to Custom Firmware

[mjc0961]

Rather it is the route that the "hackers" used (and yes they are hackers and not simply pirates).

Well, the guy(s) who wrote the custom firmware are hackers. The guys who just downloaded, installed, and used it to download free stuff are not. We call them pirates because that is one thing that anyone who download free stuff has in common: they pirated.

It's important to remember: not all hackers are pirates, and not all pirates are hackers. Some people are both, but some people are only one of the two.

 

[SovietSecrets]

Go hackers go! Sony took down one, but good luck with the rest.

Yes, because destroying peoples hard work and inconveniencing millions of people and stealing possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of software is so comparable to one hacker getting a slap on the wrist for unlocking a console to run his own OS. It's people like you that make the internet look like a cesspool of scum and villainy that the media love to run down.

Think before you post.

Oh man lets get started.

1. Sony sues the guy who is able to hack their system because Sony is embarrassed that he did it. Don't even try to tell me that they weren't because anybody that hacks your system, you're gonna go for them, but wait did Sony do the smart thing and ask the guy how he did it?! NO the try to sue the shit out of him because they need to swing their mighty Sony cock around to show him who is boss.

2. No hard work was destroyed in terms of game wise, but rather distributed out and even before then, that is if you bothered to even read the previous posts, game sharing has been going on and Sony has done pretty much nothing to stop it. What exactly is being destroyed here? The PSN network? Its a good thing then if you support anti-piracy, because now they get to stop and it fill the holes.

3. Its pretty funny that if what the guy said is true, it took Sony AN ENTIRE MONTH to start doing anything about it. Just knowing about the problem but not actually coming up with a solution isn't doing anything, its trying to do something. Sony let it happen to themselves, they left a loophole and these guys just exploited it like anybody would do.

4. Here comes the killer of them all, its hackers/pirates that show the problems with what Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo make and then act accordingly. If anything these guys are doing the job that Sony was too fucking lazy to do for themselves.

Its people like you who don't think much and ride that high horse so far up that make the internet that jacked up cesspool that it is.

Think before you post.

 

[mjc0961]

hackers are idiots pirates are idiots why should i waste time to separate them

...I don't know if you're trolling or you really are that naive or whatever else people may think of you when they read that.

 

[WanderingFool]

so your blaming the stupidity of the hackers on Sony bravo

Nope. I'm saying that you're completely missing the point of every single thing I have said. And now I'm also saying that it's obvious that you're another person who doesn't know the difference between hackers and pirates.

For the first point, Im geussing what you are saying is that the currant situation is like this:

Spoiler: Because Sony removed this:

This being the repersentative to the Other OS.

This about right?

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

You know i just had a thought but why can't people just simply buy the damn DLC or game and if they can't afford it then get a fucking job and actually save money!.

 

[mjc0961]

For the first point, Im geussing what you are saying is that the currant situation is like this:

Spoiler: Because Sony removed this:

This being the repersentative to the Other OS.

This about right?

If the bridge is the PS3 and the screw is Install Other OS, yeah, I suppose that's an extremely simplified version of what I'm saying.

 

[Swifteye]

Ugh. Does anyone not know how to show the slightest bit of sympathy anymore? So apparently if someone does you wrong once or twice or they mess up and make bad decisions for time to time it's all the reason to wish ill of them even when something terrible is happening to them and by the same token many other innocent consumers. This is the part of the escapist I honestly don't like. I can't tell you how many times i've been on the receiving end of this sort of logic path and it just makes life harder for no good reason.

 

[mjc0961]

Ugh. Does anyone not know how to show the slightest bit of sympathy anymore? So apparently if someone does you wrong once or twice or they mess up and make bad decisions for time to time it's all the reason to wish ill of them even when something terrible is happening to them and by the same token many other innocent consumers. This is the part of the escapist I honestly don't like. I can't tell you how many times i've been on the receiving end of this sort of logic path and it just makes life harder for no good reason.

I have plenty of sympathy for the honest consumers and the game developers and publishers who got screwed by both Sony's poor decisions and the pirates.

As for the pirates, like always I hope they go die in a fire (I really don't care about their various justifications for their actions). As for Sony, I hope they'll realize how badly they've been screwing up and learn from these mistakes in the future so I can feel like I'd be able to buy another one of their products without worrying how they're going to screw me over both directly and with extremely poor decisions.

Really Sony. Sue everyone who used this custom firmware to download tons of free shit and try not to make such terrible mistakes with the NGP and PS4 and maybe I'll be able to like you guys again.

 

[Swifteye]

Ugh. Does anyone not know how to show the slightest bit of sympathy anymore? So apparently if someone does you wrong once or twice or they mess up and make bad decisions for time to time it's all the reason to wish ill of them even when something terrible is happening to them and by the same token many other innocent consumers. This is the part of the escapist I honestly don't like. I can't tell you how many times i've been on the receiving end of this sort of logic path and it just makes life harder for no good reason.

I have plenty of sympathy for the honest consumers and the game developers and publishers who got screwed by both Sony's poor decisions and the pirates.

As for the pirates, like always I hope they go die in a fire (I really don't care about their various justifications for their actions). As for Sony, I hope they'll realize how badly they've been screwing up and learn from these mistakes in the future so I can feel like I'd be able to buy another one of their products without worrying how they're going to screw me over both directly and with extremely poor decisions.

Really Sony. Sue everyone who used this custom firmware to download tons of free shit and try not to make such terrible mistakes with the NGP and PS4 and maybe I'll be able to like you guys again.

I've always liked them I just don't understand where it all went wrong i've always used there products and they delivered but ever since the ps3 and the psp it's been bad news back and forth. I can't tell ya how much it hurts to be a legitimate psp user and hear all of everyone say it's just a hacking tool.

 

[Drexlor]

All of this hacking and piracy hurts the consumers most of all. The people who actually work hard to EARN what they get.

 

[Lunar Templar]

with all the 'crap' stirring around sony, the bullshit law suit,(Geohot) the 'shit talking' they can't back up (thinking the DS is a 'kiddy toy' and the new PSP is going to beat it, the aps store on your smart phones are a bigger threat to Nintendo's hand helds -.-) I'm finding hard to give a shit WHAT happens to them, maybe if they lose enough money an piss enough people off they'll figure out what they're doing wrong, or go shit can the whole gaming side of things

 

[Mxrz]

Despite all the attempts at damage control, the one good thing out of all of this is folks turning against the silly "hacker" and anon bullshit. A few people with nothing better to do want to milk this into some kind of big internet freedom drama, when it is and always has been about ripping off games.

Gotta love the moral grandstanding and "Vendetta!" angst though.

 

[MetroidNut]

Anybody else notice how, if true, this would make Critical Miss #34 amusingly right?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/8093-Critical-Miss-34

It's not exactly the same thing, but it's pretty close.

 

[Tony2077]

the truth is i don't give a shit about anything other then it coming back on line so i can make it so i can play portal 2 on PC and download demos and any full games that interest me

 

[oldtaku]

So IF it's true, Sony has kept us all offline for a week now (and counting) to protect their own profits from a few pirates.

I say few because the number of people who've bothered to hack their PS3 is near zero compared to the 50M installed units.

IF true this isn't an intrusion, just some very minor piracy (in the scheme of things) which MS more than tolerates on Xbox 360 - and PC people would just bust out laughing at how goddamn tiny it is. And they've f@#$ed you out of Portal 2 just for that.

We'll see: this is getting pretty epic.

 

[El_Ganso]

You mean to tell me that the hundreds of thousands of dollars Sony spent to sue GeoHotz would have been better spent on designing a Network infrastructure that was more robust?

I don't think the pirates are actually directly responsible for the Network being down, the percentage of people that would actually take the time to install a custom firmware to make the PS3 a dev box must be very small.

I think it's more likely that Sony caught wind of pirates accessing free content and realizing credit card info was vulnerable and pulled the plug before a massive leak occurred, which just makes apparent that PSN was badly designed in the first place. Why hasn't Microsoft suffered something similar? I mean piracy has been rampant on the XBox for a much longer time, yet their network hasn't suffered an outage this big. Why hasn't this happen to Steam? I mean PC is the chosen playground of hackers and pirates, yet you don't see Valve scrambling like a chicken without a head because they may have vulnerable credit info.

But yea Sony, keep spending all those dollars to protect your IP (imaginary property) and hire monkeys to do the software engineering.

 

[B_Diddy_M]

So Sony is pointing the fingers at hackers and some people still think it is Anon that did this.. everyone is ignoring the real threat here.

This occurred roughly 1 week ago. Whatever caused this would have needed to have the power to completely infiltrate the PSN without anyone noticing. This also must have been something brand new to the system because Sony never accounted for it. So we're looking at something brand new that happened to Sony roughly one week ago.. your answer?

GLaDOS.

1 week ago, Portal 2 was released on the PS3 and was the first time the console had ever been exposed to Portal. GLaDOS knew we would expect a computer attack so GlaDOS waited. Waited until she could get into a system no one would ever expect an attack from. The PSN. It was the perfect target! The recent issues between Sony, GeoHotz, and Anon would make the perfect cover to operate under. GLaDOS attacked as soon as able and now, the PSN is down for who knows how long. This, my friends, is the beginning of a new era.

I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

 

[erbkaiser]

So IF it's true, Sony has kept us all offline for a week now (and counting) to protect their own profits from a few pirates.

Not just their profits, also the credit card information of their actual paying customers. These thieves have successfully gained developer access to the PSN, so they in theory at least could fuck up the system completely. Since I know Sony is not exactly using the best encryption for the PSN, I prefer they keep it down until they can successfully keep these thieves out rather than risk getting my credit card info and personal data in the hands of criminals.

Of course this does show that how Sony treats this data is insecure. Steam is also pretty much completely hacked, apparently you can get full Steam clients that have all downloads in them, but at least Steam doesn't store your credit card info directly so there's nothing a thief can steal even if they crack the system.

 

[Void Droid]

As long as they get it up and running I don't mind as I have single player games still to get through although there are quite a few people claiming Sony are lying without facts and if it turns out that they are indeed not it will give me a bit of a chuckle at the expense of others.

 

[oldtaku]

So IF it's true, Sony has kept us all offline for a week now (and counting) to protect their own profits from a few pirates.

Not just their profits, also the credit card information of their actual paying customers. These thieves have successfully gained developer access to the PSN, so they in theory at least could fuck up the system completely.

As reported the hack just lets you say 'yeah I paid for this, gimme' and doesn't give you anyone else's info. You just get to download free content because you've defeated the store handshake, not because you have access to their internal network.

If it does expose the credit cards then yeah, that would be something else entirely.

EDIT: Aaaaaaand apparently it /was/ much much worse than this mere custom firmware speculation.