This week, Sony’s PS3 security got busted wide open thanks to the public release of the console’s root keys, used as a digital signature to let the machine know that the software it’s attempting to run is legit.
Sony are aware of the violation, and have responded with confidence that that can prevent hackers, homebrewers and – of course – pirates from taking advantage of the leak.
“We are aware of this, and are currently looking into it,” Sony told Edge magazine. “We will fix the issues through network updates, but because this is a security issue, we are not able to provide you with any more details.”
fail0verflow, the hacking team partly responsible for the leaked keys offer a rather contradictory statement. “The complete console is compromised – there is no way back.†“The only way to fix this is to issue new hardware. Sony will have to accept this.â€
Of course, what this means is that the same circular rubbish of official firmware releases leapfrogged by custom firmware releases that plagued the PSP is set to happen on your PS3 as well. Expect a firmware update from Sony soon.
Source : Edge
Last Updated: January 7, 2011
e1ace
January 7, 2011 at 15:27
Well fail0verflow are right… The root key is one of the keys that cannot changed. You’d likely be able to change other lower keys using it. So Sony can’t do anything to stop offline people from ‘jailbreaking’ – even with future software updates.
They can of course lock consoles out of the PSN side of things and also potentially ‘brick’ the console. The cat and mouse game will simply be on the online portion, any software attempts at stopping offline should be futile.
At least that’s my understanding.
Moshalas
January 7, 2011 at 18:35
It would be a different story if the hackers made their own “PSN” and tricked the console into connecting to theirs instead.
Exalted Overlord Geoffrey Tim
January 7, 2011 at 20:22
Geohot’s released a video of him running homebrew on a PS3 with the latest “official” firmware, modified slightly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkLSXsCKDkg