Speculation About PSN Outage Turns to Custom Firmware

[Battenbergcake]

Makes me long for the days when games were complete packages and if you wanted a 16 player deathmatch you needed 16 people and a daisy chain of cream towers.
If you wanted a match of tekken you called up Jimmy from down the road and he came down in 5 minutes and you giggled and cussed away the night because i got my arse air juggled about.

Seriously though, this is bordering on pathetic, it's impressive but these people could be using their ingenuity for something other than stealing, it's this kind of stuff that'll certain aspects of this industry into the ground.

 

[ionveau]

So, all these fights against piracy...and Sony still hasn't done jack shit about Game Sharing? The most basic form of PS3 piracy?

WTF is game sharing? by that do you mean LITERALY sharing games with your friends ??

I hope you know sharing games is piracy when you buy software the law states only you may use it if you share it thats piracy and stealing. unless you live in canada where corporations dont fix laws to make profit.

 

[rickynumber24]

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.

Wow, talk about circular logic. If it weren't for the pirates, Sony wouldn't have to protect against piracy.

Perhaps it looks like that, but, if you examine the history, the PS3 had the best track record out of the major consoles in preventing wholesale piracy, up until they removed OtherOS. Then, some of the OtherOS users took offense and bothered to discover that the system was actually only about as locked down as an unlocked door with an "Authorized Personnel Only" sign on it.

 

[faefrost]

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.

No, the guys who wrote the custom firmware are very good hackers. However the others that used it are not simply pirates. Although chances are they do not realize this yet.

They are a form of what used to be known as "script kiddies". Wannabe hackers without the knowledge to do it themselves that use prepackaged code. It doesn't make them any less hackers in the eyes of the law. Each and every one of these individuals used this firmware tool to access a private secure commercial data network for which they had no lawful permissions. They then used that access to access a public secured commercial retail network for the purpose of stealing data, code and software applications. This is hacking, not simply piracy. No matter how stupid the actual participant is. Piracy is the unlawful duplication or distribution of copyrighted materials. While no legal it is mostly a civil matter. You will have various industry organizations looking to sue you for doing it. But these guys didn't just duplicate copyrighted materials. They went through the firewall to do so. That's hacking. even if you didn't realize it was hacking and were "just running this custom firmware that your buddy from home ec class gave you so you could download God of War with a fake CC# for free". It's a much larger degree of illegality. While Pirating is somewhat akin to jaywalking or public urination as far as crimes go, hacking is at the other end of the spectrum. Hacking is "welcome to federal pound me in the @zz prison" and "here is your cell next to the Enron guys". Just because the participants are too stupid to realize the magnitude of the felony they have comitted does not mean thay can relabel it as something more innocent. And we certainly should not be helping them.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Chesh420....

What a trust worthy source!

This changes EVERYTHING!

/sarcasm.

I can't wait to find out what 'officially' happened ; p

Does anyone think it's fishy that this Chesh420 has the date of the outage in his username?
I'm kidding.

I hope this isn't the case, because then I'm going to be even more pissed at Sony: if the only threat really is just a few hackers getting some free psn games that they never would've bought anyway.
But I guess this is what it's going to be like owning a ps3 now which is too bad because it had potential to be a really good console.

 

[JamesCG]

I switched over to a new PSN account, and since I still had my old account on the PS3, I still had access to my DLC/games.

Is that a bad thing? I mean, I still bought it, I'm just using it on my new account on the same system.

This is in response to the small game sharing thing going on ITT.

 

[EchetusXe]

Chesh420....

What a trust worthy source!

This changes EVERYTHING!

/sarcasm.

I can't wait to find out what 'officially' happened ; p

Does anyone think it's fishy that this Chesh420 has the date of the outage in his username?
I'm kidding.

The question you should be asking is why did Sony take the decision to pull the plug whilst high?

I switched over to a new PSN account, and since I still had my old account on the PS3, I still had access to my DLC/games.

Is that a bad thing? I mean, I still bought it, I'm just using it on my new account on the same system.

This is in response to the small game sharing thing going on ITT.

"welcome to federal pound me in the @zz prison". I'm your cellmate. The name's Big Dave and *this* is Little Dave. Why don't the two of you get acquainted?

Reading between the lines: everyone with access to the PSN Dev Network can gain your credit card number that Sony has stored.

Seriously though, it is big step to go from "teehee lets run around on the Dev network and cause mischief and get free map downloads" to "lets become career criminals and get the federal government and credit card companies involved".

 

[Awexsome]

Did they have to jailbreak their PS3's with that code Geohotz released? If so then I hope you're proud of yourself Geo. Now the PS3 will probably have even tighter security thanks to your efforts.

Hackers can go fuck themselves. 90% of the time for consoles it's used for piracy/fraud anyway.

 

[Omnipro]

It's funny how Geohotz claims his code is not for piracy. Then Anonymous defend him by using it to pirate unlimited games and shutdown PSN.

Geohotz and Anon are both in the wrong on this one.
They claim you can buy and own the hardware and you can do anything with it.
I don't disagree with that completely.
If continue to play Playstation games, and use services like PSN you have to follow the rules and the law. They have the right to ban your console and in extreme cases disable it if they can prove it.
If you want to mod a PS3 to do other things why even bother just build a PC and you'll get even more uses out of it and pay less.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Chesh420....

What a trust worthy source!

This changes EVERYTHING!

/sarcasm.

I can't wait to find out what 'officially' happened ; p

Does anyone think it's fishy that this Chesh420 has the date of the outage in his username?
I'm kidding.

The question you should be asking is why did Sony take the decision to pull the plug whilst high?

Reading between the lines: everyone with access to the PSN Dev Network can gain your credit card number that Sony has stored.

Seriously though, it is big step to go from "teehee lets run around on the Dev network and cause mischief and get free map downloads" to "lets become career criminals and get the federal government and credit card companies involved".

I feel like every decision Sony makes about the ps3 is made whilst high... and not just on weed. They have to be flying on pcp when you look at how badly they sandbag the damn thing.

I sincerely hope it's more serious than a few casual hackers getting some free dlc.
They're going to have to do hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fraud to get the attention of the feds.

 

[SovietSecrets]

....

Wow, talk about circular logic. If it weren't for the pirates, Sony wouldn't have to protect against piracy.

And if it weren't for Sony taking out Linux and actually doing their jobs and checking for this stuff, pirates would have nothing to exploit. It comes out of Sony first, pirates have nothing to do with anything until Sony finishes their products and sets it up.

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.

1: No, they didn't sue him because they're embarrassed, they sued him because he broke the end user agreement and then enabled others to do the same.

2: In terms of game wise, no, other than games being stolen, however the PSN integrity has been, and has to be remade as a result.

3: They waited a month to take down their network and all PSN activities including online play while trying to find another way to stop it? Yeah, that sounds like a reasonable thing.

4: And here comes the killer of you straw man fallacies: If the hackers/Pirates didn't hack and pirate none of it would be needed and this wouldn't have happened, especially considering that these actions are illegal. you may as well be defending Nigerian internet scammers stealing peoples money and 'educating' them on the dangers of the internet, 4chan are there for that, and they don't steal from people (Besides some OC, but that's of no value.)

It's people like you mindlessly defending hackers that enables them, they're no dark knight of the internet, they're half asses fame hounds that can't hack real world consequences. (see what I did there?)

And it's funny that you mention that High horse, I could have sworn we both were riding one of a different coat.

Think before you derp.response iberlart

1. Right some guy gets through your system and lets others do the same and you're not gonna be pissed at him? I see. I break user agreements all the time, I don't see companies coming after me or anyone else that does.

2. I like how you didn't address how I added what are you complaining about then if its being re-made it means you get your wish if it happening less likely.

3. In the month they let people get their free stuff on and before that like I said in point two, game sharing. They have done nothing.

4. Uh no. Sony released the product which was pretty good and then they took away the otherOS option and people were able to find out the holes in Sony's system. Sony brought it upon themselves if you bothered reading other posts here instead of being closed minded.

Man your points are so bad considering you don't even counter all of them and the last one was done by Sony.

Hurr derp, read before you say anything next time.

 

[gphjr14]

Mixed blessing for me I wanna play but at the same time I have college papers to turn in so I can graduate and this one big distraction out of the way.

 

[Keybladeking57]

One thing I will say is that no matter how shitty the connection,my wii still has online with brawl. That's the only time I'll ever praise that service!

 

[Colinmac93]

I'm a bit skeptical about this whole "because someone released a custom FW to get free content" stuff. There hasn't been a mention of anyone being sued by Sony for such a thing, so I'm not too sure xD

 

[theultimateend]

So, all these fights against piracy...and Sony still hasn't done jack shit about Game Sharing? The most basic form of PS3 piracy?

WTF is game sharing? by that do you mean LITERALY sharing games with your friends ??

The name is pretty self-explanatory, isn't it? >_>

It manipulates holes in the, shockingly loose, PS3 DRM to allow multiple users access to each others PSN store purchases...even on other profiles.

So wait, you mean if someone unlocks a specific DLC item, another person could access that same DLC by simply using their profile on that person's PS3?

Not just DLC. Sony has FULL GAMES for download, too. So, it really is full-on piracy. You can share it across all profiles on that system.

Wow...if this is still an issue, Sony needs to re-prioritise their efforts...

If it were an issue they would have fixed it.

Generally game companies overreact to piracy, not underreact.

I suspect the network crashed and they didn't have their content properly saved. I was told before (probably erroneously) that this was the motivating factor behind Cataclysm. They didn't have all the source code to the original world anymore so updating it had become something they couldn't reasonably do.

If that's the case I imagine it's the same thing that happened here. But it's easier to raise a straw man/scapegoat than to actually address the issues.

Which is kind of what the gamesharing thing above is a good example of.

 

[erbkaiser]

Worst case scenario confirmed.

http://faq.en.playstation.com/cgi-bin/scee_gb.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?locale=en_GB&p_faqid=5593

Q.6 Does that mean all users? information was compromised? Tell us more in details of what personal information leaked.

In terms of possibility, yes. We believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password, login, password security answers, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data may have been obtained, including purchase history and billing address (city, state/province, zip or postal code). If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, it is possible that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may also have been obtained.

Fucking hackers.

 

[MightyMole]

Anybody else getting flashbacks of the Sega Dreamcast? If things go down the way they did back then, we may be watching piracy take down another console. You'd think after last generation, companies would have learned to take more precautions against that sort of thing. GeoHotz seems to be working on an impressive resume for himself, "Oh you know, I hacked the iPhone and single handily took down the Playstation. No biggie."

Edit: Oh, and if its true that Sony took down the PSN and then blamed it on hackers, thats real classy. Of course if it is true, they're gonna say "Oh, well it is because of hackers, they caused us to have to shut it off." Reeaal classy... That is if this all turns out to be true, of course.

 

[Sovereignty]

Are you being serious? You expect Sony to reprint advertising and packaging materials to eliminate references to the online service because it's temporarily down? You're kidding, right?

Wait they shouldn't? A week isn't a temporary outage. It's not right that their commercials are on TV advertising heavily for a service that isn't actually available currently.

They're lying to customers, every dollar you have is potentially worth more every second you hold onto it. I for one would MUCH rather keep the 300 dollars in my savings account (regardless of how trivial the amount is) then to pass it to them while I couldn't access the one feature I might just be buying the system for anyway.

Just because we can get on the internet and see that we can't access the PSN doesn't mean Joe Consumer can.

And to try and sell me how awesome the new Socom's online modes are, while I couldn't actually play it? Well that's lying.

Either pull your commercials til it's fixed, or add a disclaimer at the bottom until such time as the PSN is back up.

It's not hard to do, and if you disagree with a company spending money to do that, over an outage that is ultimately their fault anyway, don't bother responding to me.

I mean seriously these are there servers any fault for them going down is squarely on Sony, and 1 week is far too long.

 

[EchetusXe]

"we have... Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened"

Would go some way to explain why this is taking so damn long.

Also on the credit card issue it seems that the hacker/s MAY have got their hands on a juicy list of credit card numbers and contact details and are now trying to persuade the gullible to hand over that last piece of information to allow them to access your moneys. Or maybe not. Anyway, what they may or may not have now are pieces of information that any shop clerk can get ahold of.