Geohot releases the PS3 keys [Discussion]

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Grand Master

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I don't think piracy caused the PS or PS2 any real harm.

If I were able to backup my games to a HDD and play them at choice without issue, then I'm interested in this. Would I download an ISO to try a game, probably yes but down here usage is limited so I couldn't do it often

Grand Master

Kushan

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100% stealth while online is almost impossible, but MANY people don't really care about online :whistle:

The "good" news for Sony is that right now, people are still on older firmwares and are having to decrypt and modify the game executables in order to play them (newer ones, at least). That makes things much easier to detect (a simple checksum of the eboot will show if it's modified in any way and there's no way for the PS3 to "fake" the right response without the original file as well, which is a bit of a faff). The problem is, it's only a matter of time before someone modifies 3.55, bringing back PSN and letting them run the games with no modification, making it a bit harder to figure out.

It all hangs on how advanced the Blu-ray drive is. Microsoft has a whole bunch of Checks on their DVD drive, checks that aren't easy to "fake", if Sony has similar checks, then they can feasibly keep PSN clear, but if they don't, well...it could be bad.

Still, you don't necessarily need a modified console to cheat online and as long as Sony has some good policies in place for banning cheaters (of any kind), then the main "impact" on PSN should be somewhat minimal. Console bans would be ideal as well, but I have heard that it's very easy to "spoof" a modified PS3 to mimic another. Depending on how hard it is to find legitimate PS3's to spoof as, it could be the decider.

Grand Master

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The "good" news for Sony is that right now, people are still on older firmwares and are having to decrypt and modify the game executables in order to play them (newer ones, at least). That makes things much easier to detect (a simple checksum of the eboot will show if it's modified in any way and there's no way for the PS3 to "fake" the right response without the original file as well, which is a bit of a faff). The problem is, it's only a matter of time before someone modifies 3.55, bringing back PSN and letting them run the games with no modification, making it a bit harder to figure out.

It all hangs on how advanced the Blu-ray drive is. Microsoft has a whole bunch of Checks on their DVD drive, checks that aren't easy to "fake", if Sony has similar checks, then they can feasibly keep PSN clear, but if they don't, well...it could be bad.

Still, you don't necessarily need a modified console to cheat online and as long as Sony has some good policies in place for banning cheaters (of any kind), then the main "impact" on PSN should be somewhat minimal. Console bans would be ideal as well, but I have heard that it's very easy to "spoof" a modified PS3 to mimic another. Depending on how hard it is to find legitimate PS3's to spoof as, it could be the decider.

I'm sure all PS3s manufactured in the future will have security related hardware revisions as well, just like the 360/Wii.

Well I hope they do, I'd happily sell my "old" hardware enabled PS3 for a tidy profit shiftyninja.gif

After losing my 360 for tinkering with it I've not bothered touching anything, games in the UK can be purchased very cheaply, and the thought of potentially losing my actual account, let alone the hardware, is a no go.

That being said a completely offline PS3 with XMBC would be pretty nice. I would love to have iPlayer/4OD/PlayTV and everything else and call that my media center, however all of those really require online functionality...

I guess at the end of the day PS3MediaServer does everything I need, no big deal really it doesn't have an eye candy interface.

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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While it's probable that Sony will layer on more and more security crap, this flaw can't be fixed, and is going to stick around for a long time (Unless Sony decide to "break" every single PS3 and game by changing the encryption keys)

If the PS4 has PS3 backwards compatibility, it'd still have to have this flaw in it.

Grand Master

Kushan

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I'm sure all PS3s manufactured in the future will have security related hardware revisions as well, just like the 360/Wii.

Well I hope they do, I'd happily sell my "old" hardware enabled PS3 for a tidy profit shiftyninja.gif

After losing my 360 for tinkering with it I've not bothered touching anything, games in the UK can be purchased very cheaply, and the thought of potentially losing my actual account, let alone the hardware, is a no go.

That being said a completely offline PS3 with XMBC would be pretty nice. I would love to have iPlayer/4OD/PlayTV and everything else and call that my media center, however all of those really require online functionality...

I guess at the end of the day PS3MediaServer does everything I need, no big deal really it doesn't have an eye candy interface.

Remember, there's a difference between "online" and "on PSN". Look at the JTAG 360 scene, no XBL, but the boxes can still download covert art and game patches et all. The PS3 is no different. In fact, I'm pretty sure the web browser works just fine, no matter how up to date (or not) it is.

Grand Master

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Remember, there's a difference between "online" and "on PSN". Look at the JTAG 360 scene, no XBL, but the boxes can still download covert art and game patches et all. The PS3 is no different. In fact, I'm pretty sure the web browser works just fine, no matter how up to date (or not) it is.

Good point actually, but I'll wait to see what actually happens, a lot of musing going on now and we won't really know how crippled a fully banned PS3 is till we see one.

Grand Master

Rudy

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I'm sure all PS3s manufactured in the future will have security related hardware revisions as well, just like the 360/Wii.

They can't do anything about it at this point, they are able to create applications (homebrew or loader or whatever you want) with Sony's signature, so it's impossible to magically create a new console that won't accept these applications (otherwise that new consoles couldn't play games made with the current keys)

Grand Master

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They can't do anything about it at this point, they are able to create applications (homebrew or loader or whatever you want) with Sony's signature, so it's impossible to magically create a new console that won't accept these applications (otherwise that new consoles couldn't play games made with the current keys)

I know what the hackers have told us, but I'm not ruling out anything till I see how everything has panned out 6 months down the line. Right now as I said everything is just general musings and we don't even have any sort of official response from Sony.

Grand Master

Kushan

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They can't do anything about it at this point, they are able to create applications (homebrew or loader or whatever you want) with Sony's signature, so it's impossible to magically create a new console that won't accept these applications (otherwise that new consoles couldn't play games made with the current keys)

Unless they use some sort of a massive whitelist and create a new key. But then you have a dilemma - how do you put that whitelist on the older consoles without giving away the new keys, or conversely, how do you keep that list up to date without screwing over ever offline user.

Ultimately, I'm sure Sony has anticipated this from Day 1. both the PS1 and PS2 had stupid amounts of piracy, they must surely have assumed that the PS3 would get it eventually and likely have something in place to deal with it.

As a thought, though - for the PS4, based on what happened to the PS3, I'd expect Sony to once again offer Linux support, but I'd expect them to strike a balance between selling the console at a loss (which must have annoyed them when people bought hundreds of PS3's and not a single game for them) and offering an academic use. Perhaps charge an additional "OtherOS" license, by making "OtherOS" something you have to buy separately.

Grand Master

Rudy

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I know what the hackers have told us, but I'm not ruling out anything till I see how everything has panned out 6 months down the line. Right now as I said everything is just general musings and we don't even have any sort of official response from Sony.

I really duobt they go out and publicly say "Oups we ****ed up and all our PS3 consoles are wide open".... I don't think that would be very good for business ;)

Grand Master

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I really duobt they go out and publicly say "Oups we ****ed up and all our PS3 consoles are wide open".... I don't think that would be very good for business ;)

I just mean some sort of "we don't condone piracy and will be attacking it" or something.

There will be some sort of response at some point, and most likely an answer as to whether accounts will be banned or just hardware.

Grand Master

Rudy

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I just mean some sort of "we don't condone piracy and will be attacking it" or something.

There will be some sort of response at some point, and most likely an answer as to whether accounts will be banned or just hardware.

I'm sure they will do "something" to stop it and most likely it will be some kind of online ban as they can't really tell the difference between a legit app or a homebrew app (but they will be able to tell if a game has been tampered with to cheat or something)

Grand Master

Kushan

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If its detectable im sure they can ban a console via the mac address, but then hackers have access to the hardware now maybe a mac spoof would be possible.

Each PS3 is unique by more than just the MAC address. And yeah, they already know how to spoof each PS3 as a different one (or so they say, i'm not sure it has been properly tested as not many PS3's have actually been banned).

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

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Unless they use some sort of a massive whitelist and create a new key. But then you have a dilemma - how do you put that whitelist on the older consoles without giving away the new keys, or conversely, how do you keep that list up to date without screwing over ever offline user.

...

I don't think it's actually possible for Sony to change the signing keys on the console, at least that's what I've read (apparently as a security measure against hackers :laugh: )

If it is possible, they'd have to re-sign every single executable released for the PS3, and update every single PS3 to a new firmware revision without the older keys (and that has it's own issue, the firmware update would have to be signed by the old keys, but also have the functionality to change the stored keys on the console)

Grand Master

Kushan

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Maybe it self destructs? =X

Not really understand what is eFuse and how it works but the droid x is said to self destructs if you mod it. It have an eFuse and so is the Xbox 360 and PS3.

The PS3 doesn't have eFuses. I don't think the droid X actually does, either, that was all a complete load of misinformation to put off the hackers (which didn't work).

All efuses do is prevent you from being able to "downgrade" to a previous version. This works for the 360 as Microsoft were able to patch the exploits. So even if you take the flash memory of the 360 and reprogram it with an older dash, it wont work. The PS3 on the other hand...not so much.

But it's redundant. Every Firmware update Sony releases now can be decrypted, modified, resigned and flashed to the PS3. eFuses wont help there at all (and even if they did have efuses, the hackers could just stop them from being blown by the update).

Proficient

tanjiajun_34

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The PS3 doesn't have eFuses. I don't think the droid X actually does, either, that was all a complete load of misinformation to put off the hackers (which didn't work).

All efuses do is prevent you from being able to "downgrade" to a previous version. This works for the 360 as Microsoft were able to patch the exploits. So even if you take the flash memory of the 360 and reprogram it with an older dash, it wont work. The PS3 on the other hand...not so much.

But it's redundant. Every Firmware update Sony releases now can be decrypted, modified, resigned and flashed to the PS3. eFuses wont help there at all (and even if they did have efuses, the hackers could just stop them from being blown by the update).

But wiki says it does...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFUSE

Implementations

POWER5 and POWER6 high end RISC processors

IBM System z9 and System z10 mainframe processors.

Cell microprocessor used in PlayStation 3

Xenon CPU in the Xbox 360 game console.

Texas Instruments OMAP3 based cellphones and other devices

Well Sony can do crazy things like removing Other OS. Maybe they can ask all the game publisher to use a new signature in newer batch of the games.

Grand Master

HawkMan

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It won't matter, since with these codes they have full access to the firmware, whatever they do to the games won't matter.

they can make the firmware read the binary anyway. and return any value sony wants from the firmware itself.

Rising Star

aftas

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efuse = Electronic Fuse.

I thought the jailbreak thing didnt work anymore with updated firmware PS3s.

Well this seems like a better, cleaner and free solution :) Great to hear this :)

BTW, geohot does give thanks to anyone who helped out including fail0verflow.

Alot of envious people here :)

Grand Master

LittleNeutrino Veteran

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In speaking with a friend now that this has been released we were thinking it is now possible to make custom launchers for games that would include custom code for cheating, Kinda like a gameshark in the old days. Now you can just create a custom launcher that emulates a downloaded game which can launch a game from the disk only with slight changes like the inability to die or whatnot. or even worse people using it to cheat with online games such as Call of Duty and whatnot.

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