Sony Releases PS3 Firmware Update To Fight Jailbreaks 336
RyuuzakiTetsuya writes "Destructoid is reporting that the 3.42 firmware has been released for the PlayStation 3, and it has fixed the USB vulnerability that allows the PSJailbreak exploit to work."
Sony's brief announcement of the update refers only to "additional security features," though the EU blog post acknowledges that a vulnerability was addressed. PS3-Hacks.com confirms that the patch is effective against the various jailbreak tools, and they point out a different tool for bypassing the update. Sony told the BBC, "... as we always have, we will continue to take necessary actions to both hardware and software to protect the intellectual content provided on the PlayStation 3."
Re:Jailbreakers to announce a new hack in 5 minute (Score:2, Interesting)
It took them long enough to break the old firmware. There's no reason to assume that breaking the new firmware will be any better.
Re:So ... the War's Back on Then? (Score:1, Interesting)
Kudos (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PS3 is a lame lockout box and I won't buy one. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How to make money and friends (Score:3, Interesting)
What you describe is pretty much what XNA is all about.
100$/year access to run code on the machine (with full access to 5 of the 6 cores, and full access to the graphics card), you can privatly publish to your own xbox to test stuff, and it's community approved for placement in the Indie Marketplace where you can sell your stuff, which will only be denied if you either have serious bugs (bug handling is okay, as long as the machine doesnt crash or display some random error message), and you can't do certain things like have a game where avatars have sex or something of that nature.
Only downside is that you can't set the price for your stuff to 0, it has to be a minimum of either 60 or 80 MS Points (can't remember exactly).
Re:Jailbreakers to announce a new hack in 5 minute (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem with that is that the hole that was found was a software hole. Having opened the system the hackers can easily look for software holes in the existing firmware but not future ones. Each time Sony does an update the hackers have to reveal a hole they've found if they wish to allow people to jailbreak that firmware. Sony have plenty of experience in this from the PSP, there have been many periods during which up-to-date systems could not be jailbroken. They have the added bonus this time that the average PS3 is nearly always connected to PSN and Joe Average is very likely to move to the newest firmware as soon as possible.
The hardware is fairly solid I would say given that after so many years there still isn't a hardware mod-chip, it's not like no one would have been trying.
Re:Never about Protecting Intellectual Content (Score:1, Interesting)
I would not call the DS scene as "thriving"... there had been no good new homebrew apps or updates since more than 3 years :(
Re:So ... the War's Back on Then? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sony haven't lost. The Xbox 360 has suffered from similar attacks and demonstrated that online patching works. Very few people bothered to perform the hacks during the short time windows in which they worked and even fewer bothered to keep them hacked rather than upgrade or play new games (which require upgrades). The result is that actually finding an Xbox that is still attackable is a heck of a lot easier said than done.
Some people who follow tech news closely will choose to step off the PS3 train at this point and take the ability to play pirated games released up to this point over the online services, multiplayer and new games. Chances are, most people won't.
Re:Jailbreakers to announce a new hack in 5 minute (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing is that while your biggest *market* for a hack to run arbitrary code is always piracy, the producers of the same also tend to be homebrew/tinkerer types. Accordingly, guess what language the hack's distribution is crouched in?
That the "evil piracy" part of it still required you to have an original disc to install from (it's literally just an "Install game from disc completely to HDD" feature) makes it not as bad as it could be.
That the open source implementation of the hack (PSGroove) doesn't support doing even that out of the box (though it's trivial to alter the source to get it to -- you only have to change four values in an array) might suggest something. Yes, PSGroove specifically and explicitly altered the original hack to break the Backup Manager and only the backup manager.
As an aside, a way to get your PS3 to access PSN without patching is already in place, and a homebrew FTP server was also released today.
As for tool chains, an OtherOS enabler, and Linux, the ability to even attempt to homebrew dev for the PS3 has only existed for a few weeks now. Those things take time. Again, an FTP server was released today for the PS3. Baby steps.
Re:So ... the War's Back on Then? (Score:2, Interesting)
The music industry gave up on DRM yonks ago.
I'll take your word for it. You may not believe this, but I've never downloaded music legally or otherwise. I just don't listen to it.
Music has the lowest percieved value, smallest file size, and lowest barrier to entry. It's the most likely to be pirated, not the least. Note that Napster was created for sharing music, not for piracy of games, porn, etc.
The question isn't which would be pirated the most, but which would be most likely to be profitable despite piracy. The theory being that far more people will spend a couple dollars here and there to help the musician than $60 at once to help the developers.
The reason to ditch DRM is every copy of software they sell requires a staff of people to keep unlocking and troubleshooting it after the purchase. Instead of a one-time sale, now they can watch the individual profits of their games slowly get eaten away over the years. They're also increasing the value of piracy but not effectively stopping it. Go look up what happened to Spore just before it launched.
Being overly draconian with DRM can certainly hurt sales. Making a point of releasing a game DRM free can also be used as a gimmick to get the anti DRM crowd to show their support. But if there was no DRM and no lawsuits against pirates, they'd all be on even ground in that regard.
In such a case, I don't think nearly enough people would choose to spend money on the game to support the number and quality of games being made now. We'd see a major contraction in the number of games, an increase of in game ads, and more developers switching to smaller simpler titles they can sell cheaply.
Re:So ... the War's Back on Then? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you miss the point entirely. Considering a market were piracy goes unpunished, etc as you indicate is, IMO, sheer lunacy. Either that or I missed the part of the conversation where Sony trying to lock out the jailbreak was being done because the jailbreakers are advocating such a market place.
From what I have seen, (I am part of the PSP jailbreak/homebrew community), most people want to do this becauseof one of the following:
Basically, to me, it seems to get down to most people wanting to do this to be able to have control over a physical item they bought. I am not sure why corporations want to be in such control over the pieces that people have physically purchased. If they modify the product they purchased in a way you don't like, then don't let them connect to your content distribution network (PSN in this case). If they want to modify a game they purchased in some way you don't like, don't let them connect to your multiplayer server, otherwise, their mod is none-of your-business and non-impactive to you (however, you should still be interested in it, because if it becomes popular, it may give you ideas of what you consumers want, and allow you an new channel for revenue). If they illegally distribute the copyrighted material that you so diligently worked on, and is a stream of profit for you, then use DRM like steam uses (Steam's is DRM done right IMO...It allows the flexibility I want, doesn't get in the way of me enjoying a game, and still prevents me from distributing it illegally...(but one might argue, that since it is generally priced decently, and doesn't hinder my enjoyment, I am less inclined to pirate anyways...but I digress).
In theory both communism and capitalism work...so lets learn from the failure of communism and stick to the conditions of the theory in practice. That is, start listening to your consumers, stop manipulating the system (both sides) to make it more advantageous to one side (i.e. the consumer gets 100% free reign, or the producer gets to control everything and charge exorbanent amounts)
I may be dreaming, but dreams cost nothing
Re:So ... the War's Back on Then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really. The GP describes a situation where nobody pays, everyone pirates...
No, he described a scenario where piracy was 'easy and risk free'. That has been the case for at least 6 years. There are no more real bandwidth or computer knowledge prerequisites to being an effect pirate anymore. That floodgate is wide open.