Police Raid PS3 Hacker's House, Hacker Releases PS3 'Hypervisor Bible' 448
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from PSGroove.com:
"Graf_chokolo, who has contributed countless things to the PS3 scene, had his private home raided by police this morning. They confiscated all of his 'accounts' and anything related to PS3 hacking. Some of you may remember that graf_chokolo promised if he was pushed, that he would release all of his PS3 hypervisor knowledge to the world. He kept good on this promise, releasing what is being dubbed as the Hypervisor Bible. 'The uploaded files contains his database, which is a series of tools for the PS3's Hypervisor and Hypervisor processes. It will help other devs to reverse engineer the hypervisor of PS3 further.'"
My PS3 - I can do what I want with it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Sony is only a few months away from being told exactly the same thing by the US and EU governments. i.e. Just as cellphones can be jailbroken, so too can consoles.
Re:My PS3 - I can do what I want with it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
The moral/practical lesson of this story is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree with the way Sony is doing it, but at least they are doing something. Some of the multiplayer games are completely unplayable as cheating is rampant. Something needs to be done as they're ruining the games for honest players.
Server-side checks: You don't have to Like Blizzard's "got-to-be-online-to-play" for Starcraft II, but notice: no cheating, with 1000000+ connected users and a easy to hack platform (PC+Mac).
If your game uses p2p connections and no gameplay server, some care in designing the protocol will make it much harder to cheat. Deterministic sync'hing with input passing, for example, will provide you a no-cheating solution. There's many other options.
Problem with cheating is that about no one in the industry cares about quality. Don't go justifying Sony's action on gamer's cheating. Find something better.
Re:Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The moral/practical lesson of this story is (Score:3, Insightful)
Friends don't let friends buy Sony!
Follow the Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My PS3 - I can do what I want with it (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>However, they can still refuse to offer you PSN services.
Yep.
I'm okay with that. Still that doesn't mean I should be arrested for modding MY console. If Sony ever tries, and my life is ruined because of it (like what RIAA did to Jammie Thomas and other victims), the CEO might as well consider himself equivalent to Mubarak (i.e. a liberty-suppressing tyrant).
Oh and I'm not sure why people think I'm "trolling" or anti-sony??? The PS1 and 2 were my favorite consoles. 10 years of great gameplaying (1995-2005) so I'm hardly anti-sony.
Re:Cheating (Score:3, Insightful)
They could also just require you to be logged into their service to play multiplayer; forcing people to be online for singleplayer is a retarded policy. Some of us are regularly in hotels and we don't always have a network connection (and if we do there's no guarantee the connection is any good), or your provider might have some big outage etc etc.
Forcing people to be online for an offline game or offline play is just a big no-no.
P.S. The photo (Score:4, Insightful)
Was it really necessary for the police to wear Riot gear and Bust down the door? Did they think this gamer was going to beat them with a ps3 controller??? I bet they shot his little dog too (standard operating procedure).
Jeez. All they needed to do was knock and say, "We have a warrant to search your home," like polite servants. - Stupid SA
Re:P.S. The photo (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the more important question is....what laws did the guy break in the first place? Did he break ANY or is this just another case of the idiotic way americans bow down and worship business?
Re:P.S. The photo (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhhhh, do you REALLY think that was an actual photo of this particular raid, and not just some stock photo of a police raid? You really think they planned this raid, then brought in a photographer to do an artsy photo with a lensbaby, and then released that photo to the press?
Re:This story doesn't make any sense (Score:4, Insightful)
> "SONY was today at my home"? That's not how raids work.
"Operation Sundevil" ring a bell?
Depending on how they spun the story to police, a "raid" could range from anything to a civil subpoena to a SWAT-style assault with Sony "experts" tagging along to "assist" with evidence identification. Maybe Sony decided they wanted something a bit rougher than what they inflicted on George Hotz and made up some kind of uberhacker story?
the new ISA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My PS3 - I can do what I want with it (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies like Sony have no choice but to do whatever they can in order to make money for their shareholders, that is their only duty in the capitalist system we live in. If they think they can make more money by being nice they will, but if they can make more money by being bastards as is usually the case then they have to do that instead.
That's not how it works.
One of the effects of unethical behavior is that people start to not like you, and protest your actions. This costs you money, and is part of the capitalist system you are saying we should be forgiving them because of - instead, we should be embracing that capitalist system, and making sure that they lose money every time they do something stupid, unethical, or just plain evil. Occupy their time, give them bad press so that people stop buying their products, and every time you do so, make absolutely sure that the reason they are losing money is clear - if the dog craps on the carpet, you don't just sigh and whine to politicians - you rub their nose in it and tell them BAD DOG! And when a corporation misbehaves and pisses on all of their customers, they need to have their noses rubbed in it and be told BAD COMPANY!.
That "duty to the shareholders" you talk about? If unethical behavior actually resulted in losses, then duty to the shareholders would prevent it. People like you who whine "Don't hate the evil company for being evil! Hate the politicians who let them!" are just encouraging them, the same way that petting the dog and ignoring what it has done wrong every time it craps on your carpet encourages it to keep crapping on your carpet.
Is anyone else scared? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is anyone else scared that companies such as Sony have the power to make the police do their bidding and break into peoples' private homes?
What the fuck is going on in our country?
Re:P.S. The photo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My PS3 - I can do what I want with it (Score:5, Insightful)
What's amazing to me is the different way that the police forces are treating these hardware tinkerers with Sony itself, which instigated and distributed a massive campaign of installing rootkits on people's computers. Utterly illegal, and yet the Sony CEO or whoever didn't get his door battered in at 6am.
One law for the serfs and a different, more lenient set of 'rules' for the our lords and masters.
Re:the new ISA (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe this took place in Germany, although it took a lot of digging to find that out.
---linuxrocks123
Re:Amen! (Score:4, Insightful)
(2) developing tools for cheating in-game, ala aimbots that're easily adapted to new games,
Well, what did I as a PS3 gamer do to deserve this?
Well, you're funding those idiots, but that's your right, and I won't judge you for it. However, its the attackers rights to take their kit apart and share the info as they see fit, and the cheaters right to try to game the system. Sony is the one who should be protecting *you* in a technical manner, and not by simply trampling over non-customers rights.
This is precisely the reason why hackers are despised right now by most PS3 owners. I couldn't care less about them making emulators, games, knockoffs or even copies of games, installing linux, xbmc or using the console for other awesome stuff, but what I do care about is that my gaming experience is being affected by what they do. I am not Sony, nor am I fan of Sony. I choose the PS3 because I like to play games without hassle once in a while, and in my experience, Microsoft is by far the more evil company.
So, about retaliation: (1) Fight the DMCA. This is the real problem, isn't it? (2) Stop buying Sony products. (3) Stop whining. You (american hackers) knew full well that this was illegal in your country and didn't give a shit about getting caught.
This is how society and the market works - if enough gamers are pissed that gaming on a PS3 is a waste of time due to cheaters, then Sony makes less money. If Sony makes less money, then they may look into stopping the cheaters via methods other than simply bludgeoning non-cheaters with the full force of civil law.
Re:My PS3 - I can do what I want with it (Score:4, Insightful)
So how does that work if I buy a book? If I rip a few pages and let everyone know that by ripping pages 12 and 15 the book is much more entertaining have I done anything wrong? If I start describing the plot of a movie and give an opinion as to how that plot could have been better, have I done anything wrong?
I understand that if I start bypassing online security then I am trying to bypass something that doesn't belong to me. That, in my opinion, is wrong.
On the other hand, there are books and magazines that explain how to open locks and safe. These are perfectly legal, educational and sometimes useful. If I am not attempting to open your lock then I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.
Laws like the DMCA are simply wrong.