PS3 cracked

[Jens]

George Hotz, alias geohot, famous for unlocking the iPhone, claims on his weblog (here and here) that he has created an exploit that lets him hack a PS3.

There's a very readable analysis at Eurogamer.

Hotz denounces piracy on his site. I'm opposed to it, too, but I hope if this is real that it will be used for interesting stuff. In particular I'm hoping someone will prove that PS3 could play DVD-Audio. (See this thread.)
I'd even be prepared to pay for such a piece of software commercially (it ought to be downloadable from the PlayStation Store) but so far nobody has picked up the idea (or Sony has vetoed it).

PS: I think even if this hack works that it doesn't mean the SACD format is compromised but let's see what happens. Personally I'm not interested in such hacks anyway though I'm sure there are people who would be.

[mister_playboy]

While interesting, this hack is a very long way from fully compromising the security on the PS3. The Cell has some impressive security baked into its design. The PDF available here has more details.

[Jens]

There is a new mod chip that supposedly cracks PS3.

http://kotaku.com/5616952/working-playstation-3-modchip-is-not-a-hoax-australian-retailer-says

Personally I would hope to get more out of a hack (although backing up SACDs on the hard drive and playing them from there would sound interesting if it did that ) but I'm sure copying games to the HDD is what the majority of users are after.

[Jens]

In the latest news, hackers claim to have cracked the private key Sony uses to sign software to run on PS3.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/30/ps3_jailbreak_hack/

It looks to me like it's not of immediate use to the average user but it could be used to create software that instantly runs and makes it possible for consumers to run pirated software or back up games to the hard disk and run them from there.

Now wouldn't it be interesting to be able to copy SACDs to the HDD and play them from there?

[Brandon B]

That would be great. Probably the first non-game use I would have for filling up my hard drive.

[Jens]

It may be near. See this thread

[The Seventh Taylor]

When I read this headline my first thought was that Kevin Butler's Twitter account had been hacked but it seems that wasn't even needed.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/02/09/1412253/Sony-Marketing-Man-Tweets-PS3-Master-Key?from=rss

Cunning, very cunning.

[Jens]

Indeed. More extensive coverage here:

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/02/09/playstation_jailbreak_key_tweeted/

[Jens]

I'm not sure what else it does beyond playing copied games but reportedly there's a new 'Jailbreak2' USB dongle out for PS3:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-playstation3-hacked-again