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Comments: 296 + - Games: PS3 Hacked? on Monday January 25, @06:35AM
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Several readers have sent word that George Hotz (a.k.a. geohot), the hacker best known for unlocking Apple's iPhone, says he has now hacked the PlayStation 3. From his blog post:
"I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip. 3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system. ... As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."
Related Stories
Technology: iPhone Freed From AT&T, Twice 357 comments
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Submission: PS3 Hacked by Anonymous Coward
PlayStation 3 Hack Released Online 164 comments
Force it!!!
If it breaks, well, it wasn't working anyway...
No, don't force it, get a bigger hammer.
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Cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess the main reason for this will be so you can play pirated games. Homebrew is already possible on PS3 and lets not kid ourselves, piracy is always what these things are mostly used for.
But even more worrysome is if this enables complete access to system and memory, cheating will become a problem. For example 360 hack isn't the same, you can't run your own code or modify memory on it - it merely allows you to play pirat^H^H^H^H^H backups. This will be a lot more serious hack.
I usually play on PC, but when I'm playing on PS3/360 I like that I know there aren't cheaters. While packet-modifying is theorically possible if there isn't any encryption or checksums in the network data, cheating on consoles is a lot smaller problem than on PC and some types of cheats (wallhacks etc) are impossible to create without direct access to memory and code.
And I'd like to keep it that way.
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of lessons have been learned from the original Xbox days. By the end, essentially you couldn't get online without the original dash and a retail game, which limited hacks to whatever you could do with game saves or screwing with the downloaded content. Those are relatively easy to police. I imagine Sony will be keen to do something similar, and set up their servers to dropkick anyone who logs in with an unapproved configuration.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's an adage that I like to bear in mind:
If you choose to trust your client, then you are planning for failure, because any successful client application is going to get hacked.
I guess it's a simple economic calculation: by the time your client has a large enough userbase that someone takes the time to hack it, you've already made your profit. Screw anyone who buys it after the client is owned - they should have got in at launch.
Re:Cheating (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mmm. What the XBox Ban-a-Thon shows us:
I'm sure it's working out for Microsoft financially, but they'll always lag behind the exploits while trying to secure the client or play whack-a-hack.
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has been banning Xbox 360s for years.
The process for "fixing" a banned Xbox 360 console involves cloning the NVRAM from another Xbox 360. That's hardly working around a ban.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
Why on earth has the parent been modded up? It's one of the most blatantly misinformed rants I've read in a long time.
Before I go any further, let me make one thing clear; for certain genres of games (fpses and RTSes, in particular), I very much like having a dedicated server option. I'm absolutely not arguing against this; I was annoyed by the Modern Warfare 2 fiasco as well.
However the simple fact is that cheating is less prevalent in games which use a centralised server system, or a closed matchmaking system than in games which have a more distributed public model. At the extreme end of the scale, you have MMOs, where the server infrastructure is more or less provided exclusively by the publisher. The server is therefore pretty much locked down. Yes, you occasionally get cheats detected from the client-side (Final Fantasy XI had a bad rash of these for a while), but they tend to get addressed very quickly and the consequences for getting caught cheating are severe (usually the deletion of your account, with the loss of all progress).
At the other extreme you have Counter-Strike, back as it used to be in the wild before Valve finally developed half-way useful anticheat. If you joined a public game, you could almost take it for granted that at least one person on the server would be cheating. I used to be the head-admin of a league, with a few hundred players, and every season, a couple of those players would be caught cheating. It used to be pretty steady... in the 1-2% range. And by and large, the consequences were pretty low. Until fairly late in the day, the worst that would happen if you cheated on a public server would be that the admin would notice and ban you. If you were stupid enough to do it in a league, your team would get kicked out. Moreover, while bans could theoretically be enforced using a unique ID linked to your Half-Life CD key, the system was so badly broken that it was trivial for even your average idiot to get around it. Over time, Valve tightened up on this - and how did they do it? By more centralised anti-cheat, centralised player-registries and so on.
Allowing cheating in multiplayer games is a very, very bad thing for a developer or publisher to be seen to do. It annoys honest players (who are, anecdotally, more liable to have bought the game legitimately rather than be using a pirated version) and makes them less likely to buy your products in future.
Single-player cheat codes are an entirely different kettle of fish. Nobody really cares if you cheat in a single-player game. It doesn't detract from anybody else's experience. So if companies want to include singleplayer cheat codes, then let them. To be honest, the whole "achievements" thing, and the "socialisation" (I know that's an ugly term, but I can't think of a better one) of single-player gaming on the 360 and PS3 has meant that single-player cheat codes have actually become far rarer than they used to be.
There's an entirely separate discussion over whether "premium" content in multiplayer focussed games is starting to intrude on gameplay mechanics, as opposed to being purely cosmetic, but this probably isn't the time or the place for that.
Parent
Re:Cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
Because while these servers exist, they aren't very popular. The user-base of the average 3rd-party server is, as I understand it, less than 100. Most WoW players are aware of them... and make the decision to steer well clear and stick with the better resourced, better administered official servers. If anything, I'd take the "open" WoW servers as an example that the third-party server model just doesn't work for MMOs.
There may be a market for middlingly-multiplayer (say... up to 40 people) persistent world games with third party servers (like the old MUDs, but updated for the modern age). But I'm talking here about the kind of thing that Neverwinter Nights has made a nod towards in the past with some of its more ambitious modules, not something on the scale of WoW.
Parent
Re:Cheating (Score:4, Informative)
No access to the GPU before this!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course! Why didn't the they think of this before?
I mean -- it's brilliant -- vendors restricting our use of our property for our own good, the good of the collective users, or maybe just the good of their bank accounts.
They should do this on cars too. Vehicle manufactures should come equipped with GPS based governors, alcohol detection, sex detection, and reckless driving detection straight from factory. This could even be extended to manual shoulder checks , cellphones, smoking, eating, talking, and ev
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Funny)
Vehicle manufactures should come equipped with GPS based governors, alcohol detection, sex detection
Just for the record, are we talking:
a) I'm detecting you're receiving a blowjob while driving, so I'm just going to pull over for a bit
b) I'm detecting you're a woman, so I'm limiting top speed to 50(kph, not mph) or simply not starting at all
Besides, this is /., neither will happen all that often anyway...
Parent
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Funny)
The best accident reduction approach would be to temporarily incapacitate anyone who touches a smart phone while driving. And then give them a taser-like shock, knock them out and tattoo "douchebag" on their forehead.
Parent
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Funny)
Yes because zapping the driver into unconsciousness while he is driving at 65mph on the highway will reduce accidents.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes because zapping the driver into unconsciousness while he is driving at 65mph on the highway will reduce accidents.
And that, kids, was the sound of a joke dying.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish I could stamp "douchebag" on the forehead of everyone who brings up smartphones as though they're some kind of new evil. I've driven behind plenty of people reading books, doing makeup, curling their hair and even eating soup (with two hands).
The problem isn't phones, the problem is people driving stupidly. Stop it with the moronic rants about cell phones already.
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus Christ, he's not coming out in support of locked-down hardware, he's just pointing out that in principle (as has happened on previous occasions) breaking a console can lead to a wave of shitheads ruining your gaming experience. That's a trade-off that's worth debating.
Parent
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Informative)
Sony is perfectly fine with you running software sold for the PS3; that's how they make their money. Hacking it so that you can give that software away isn't in their best interest, so they build in DRM. The Windows comparison doesn't hold water in this case.
It keeps their developers happy and maintains a semblance of sanity on their system. It's ugly, but seeing that its main purpose is to be a gaming system, it does the job. They don't stop you from remotely streaming or locally playing any kind of media; you're free to knock yourself out. Heck, they even support DivX.
Given a choice, Sony would rather restrict their infinitesimally small Linux base because, quite frankly, nobody really cares. People who are bloody-minded enough to use them as a processing farm are more curiosities than mainstream, and I'm sure that serious efforts, such as by universities and the like, get one-on-one support from Sony if they want it.
Linux users on the PS3: zero profit. PS3 gamers on the PS3: the whole reason the system was made. I think that the line of reasoning is pretty straightforward here.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You could use PhyreEngine [wikipedia.org] and a debug PS3. I think they cost about twice that of a normal PS3.
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a point to limiting certain products so they function as a level playing field. PC gaming is frustrating because of wallhackers and morons with aimbots. Console gaming is preferable because it's generally difficult to hack the system. Limiting products increases the value it has.
Parent
Errr - NO! Hom,ebrew not already possible. (Score:5, Informative)
You can't access some of the hardware, particularly the GFX from an "Other OS" and the new slim models don't even support the Other OS option, so no, this is not just for cheating and piracy and there is no current way to run homebrew well.
We can even run linux better in a hacked system as currently the graphics performance is pretty dreadful. There is far more to life than piracy and cheating. I welcome this development.
Helll, I'd welcome it even if there were few to no forseeable applications, just the opening up of a new computer platform...
Parent
Re:Errr - NO! Hom,ebrew not already possible. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
No Cedega for you! (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but Wine and its derivatives can only ever work on x86 hardware (or hardware with x86 compatibility) as I understand it. You can move binaries between OS's by emulating.intercepting.translating system calls, but not between architectures.
It would need native linux games to be compiled for PPC, preferably designed and built specially for Cell hardware.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wine is actually working on getting support for other architectures (ARM is the one I noteced), presumably either to add support for WinMo apps on Android or similar (WinCE API is a bit different from Win32, but not extremely) or to support compiling a Win32 app for Linux on ARM.
That said, the gist of your post is completely correct. For now, at least, Wine would be completely useless on the Cell or any other PPC-based processor.
Re:No Cedega for you! (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. WINE Is *Not* an Emulator; that is, it is perfectly happy to re-implement the Windows API. And like most code, it can be recompiled on, say, SPARC without too much work.
But the code that calls it needs to be able to execute natively - because WINE Is Not an Emulator. In theory you could run Windows NT Alpha/PowerPC code with the corresponding version of WINE...
tl;dr GP gets it right. WINE won't work.
Parent
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
You're forgetting one thing - homebrew is possible, but access to the 3d hardware is disabled so that unofficial software can't compete with official games. That, combined with the removal of the ability to even use a 3rd party operating system in the new hardware revisions, is a rather compelling reason to hack the PS3.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You can easily cheat anyway. Just use a gateway between your PS3 and the internet. Then you can alter the packet data to your heart's content. See an enemy? Have the program on the gateway auto-aim for you by changing your target coordinates. If you're counting on the platform to stop cheaters you'll be very disappointed. I'd be quite shocked if such programs don't already get used, I know they existed for past platforms.
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Informative)
Actually there is no longer any way to run homebrew on PS3, unless you manage to run it as BD-Live content from a disc somehow (like BluTV).
With PS3 Slim the ability to run "Other OS" disappeared with Sony citing costs to maintain the feature as the reason to kill it off.
The homebrew option was never really that interesting as (like others have pointed out) there was no direct GPU access and there was no option to VSYNC, which makes for horrible media playback.
While both PS3 and 360 have reasonable video playback features, we all know they come nowhere near the power of XBMC and similar solutions. If you only want one device under your television and would prefer not converting/transcoding everything, this hack might well end up being very useful.
I certainly hope to add XBMC functionality to my PS3, because now that the Slim is out, it's pretty easy to move around the house and hook up to and old device (easier than moving my 360s).
Parent
Re:You obviously know nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Like I said, there are valid reasons for that and you have one. But lets be honest here, most people are only interested about this because it can break copy protections and will use it solely for playing pirated games.
Parent
Re:You obviously know nothing (Score:4, Informative)
I'm all for the hacks, because that one user deserves to be able to use his PS3 how he wishes; but piracy is a side-effect that will numerically overwhelm the homebrew, just like it has on every cracked console (360, Wii, DS, PSP, x-box, PS2, etc.)
Parent
Re:You obviously know nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you bought the wrong device. What you want is called a computer, and will allow you to run any code you want.
Parent
Re:You obviously know nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
I really want XBMC-HD for PS3 (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole DLNA (DNLA?) rubbish is gross, it's so backwards.
I don't want to transcode, I just want a damned good media centre (and a gaming machine!) the XBMC devs had started considering work on the PS3 a long time ago but then Sony closed the loophole to access the video card under linux (or rather accelerated mode?) so it was scrapped.
The PS3 is a fantastic chunk of hardware and while I'd really rather not get banned from their system as I have no intention (or time anymore) to pirate games, I'd love to see the machine play back stuff a bit better. (it does fairly well now but it's nothing on XBMC)
The machine has 256mb of system ram, does 1080p output, optical output, 7.1 dolby hardware, wifi, hard disk, USB 2.0, gigabit networking - it's more than enough to do HD XBMC.
Fingers crossed in 12 to 18 months time there's some kind of news.
Re:I really want XBMC-HD for PS3 (Score:4, Interesting)
I dont want to start a Holy war or anything, but PS3 Media Server [google.com] is a million times better than TVersity (which many people report having problems wtih it's stability etc)
YMMV of course
Parent
No. Just... no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Um... no. If you didn't "notice" that up front, then you were either exceptionally dim (my condolences) or were paying a dangerously low amount of attention (in which case, I fear for you crossing the street). Console makers don't exactly hide the restrictions they place on what they permit to run.
I got a PS3
Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, yeah, one more thing. Let's quote someone who made this point far more articulately, Thomas Jefferson: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Of course, he went on to say: Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility...
No copyright/patents/trademarks at all is a pretty bad state. Draconian DRM and unending copyright isn't productive, either. Fortunately, we can try to find a balance between them. Pretending the choice is only one or the other is ridiculous.
Parent
RSX in Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux on PS3 for non-scientific work has been a disappointing experience. There is very little code out there that uses the SPUs (and the PPU stinks for general purpose computing) and the hypervisor prevents hardware accelerated graphics.
While the first issue has to do with the community, the second is a restriction imposed by Sony. Perhaps this hack will make it possible to use the RSX (PS3's hardware graphics) in Linux? Maybe then an SNES emulator will run better on a PS3 than a second-gen iMac.
What is the Linux community's willingness to embrace a hack such as this?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you mean by the linux community?
I agree that the likes of redhat probably won't support this any time soon. But Debian? Gentoo? Or a community like xbox-linux could spring up.
Some of the linux community are probably quite excited by this.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Like they didn't touch the GC/Wii after it got hacked: http://www.gc-linux.org/wiki/Main_Page [gc-linux.org] ?
Hack leaked, reprinted here (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Blame Sony, not the hacker (Score:5, Interesting)
Before anyone goes "oh, this is only so people can play copies and cheat".
Read the other comments. See what people would like out of their PS3. They want to do "real" homebrew software, with full hardware access instead of the castrated version Sony "allows". They want to use their PS3 as a Media Center, something that's simply impossible with the current setup.
Give the people what they want and they will not crack your hardware open. Sure, some will do it for the "going to the moon" reason (it's there, and we can), but most will want their box to do what they want to do. If the box does it, no hacking will happen.
I modded my old XBox. Why? Because I wanted to run XBMC. It wanted a way to stream my movies on my HD to my TV easily. The XBox was there, a TV card for my computer wasn't (the SVideo output was really crappy), so it was a no brainer that I'd want my XBox which had logically a good TV compatible output to do the trick. It didn't do it out of the box, so it was modded. Oddly, I never bought a single game ever since, wonder why that could be...
Bottom line, when people "hack" a platform, they will of course strip all copy restriction as well, simply because it limits the ability of the box and it's possible. If you want to keep your users from hacking their box, give the box any ability your users might want to get out of it.
Re:You have it completely right (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony doesn't really care about all of that. They only care if you buy PS3 games as everything else will lose them money. If you buy a PS3 and use it as a computer or HTPC or whatever, they lose money on it. Only by selling games for it do they actually make money.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Only by selling games for it do they actually make money.
I bought a used Xbox to use it for a media center, and would up buying half a dozen new games and about that many used ones. The new games are sales Microsoft would not have made if not for the existence of XBMC. In addition, the consoles are now sold at a profit, however slight, and add to sales figures which corporations and fanboys alike love to announce.
So, while this part of your comment is accurate, the rest is nonsense. Getting the console into my house is a way to sneak games in there, too.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you buy a PS3 and use it as a computer or HTPC or whatever, they lose money on it.
So why did Sony enable the installation of Linux or other OSes on the non-slim version? Even without the GPU, it has turned out an incredibly powerful computer for some uses. Some research groups use a cluster of PS3s for scientific work, for example.
Cool... (Score:3, Interesting)
It will be very cool to have full system access to the resources of the PS3. Also, I know that the Cell itself has security baked into it. Does this imply that the cell itself has been compromised? I know that the two events are unrelated, but shame on you Sony for removing the Other OS option from the Slim. Why take away the coolest part of the system?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure you can find the odd cheap one off Ebay etc, but its still a big hassle, that is if you get one at all.
I have mixed feelings about the hack, only time will tell if its good or bad.
If it really works without any modchip then it does bring the thoughts to the SEGA Dreamcast, awesome machine but seriously flawed copyprotection.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
a) The other OS function was ONLY cut from the Slim version. Fat versions still have it, and its still available on firmware updates for the fat version. Nevertheless, how you say it limits CPU does not make sense, as you do get the same CPU cores, that native PS3 games get IF you run other OS (1 general dual threaded PPU, and 6 SPUs, with 1 being reserved for the system, same as for native ps3 games). If you have a slim PS3, you cannot get other OS anyway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_on_the_PlayStatio [wikipedia.org]
Re:SONY and Apple - holding our hardware hostage (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent