14 DAY TRIAL // The team behind the PSJailbreak, the first PlayStation 3 Jailbreak technology, has just revealed the PSDowngrade, a new type of tool that allows PlayStation 3 owners to downgrade their firmware from 3.42 or 3.50 back to 3.41 or another earlier version, so that they can jailbreak their home console.
Currently, all jailbreak technologies for the PS3 only work on older firmwares, starting with 3.41, meaning that those that upgraded to 3.42 or 3.50, can't hack their device.
Now though, PSJailbreak strikes again, with the PSDowngrade, that, according to their website, allows users to roll back their PlayStation 3 software to earlier versions, including 3.41 or even 3.12, which had the Other OS feature.
According to the team, this is another "world first" and will soon be implemented in the regular PSJailbreak USB dongles that are sold all over the world.
PSDowngrade will be available as an update to the PSJailbreak code, meaning those that own an original device can implement this feature free of charge.
As of yet, Sony declined to comment on the new announcement, but rest assured that its engineers are working hard to eliminate the exploit that allows the device to downgrade the console.
For those late to the PlayStation 3 hacking party, it all started this summer, when the PSJailbreak technology was revealed, offering homebrew support and the ability to play games right from either the internal hard drive of the console or from external ones.
As you can imagine, even if the technology started out as proprietary for the PSJailbreak team, open source code appeared on the web, in the form of PSFreedom and other ones, allowing people to hack their own console using mobile phones, calculators or, as we've seen a few weeks ago, even a DualShock 3 controller.
Sony acted fast to stop this new technology that would allow piracy to blossom on the PS3, and released firmware updates that prevented the USB dongle with the jailbreak code to affect the console.
The firmwares that patched the vulnerability were 3.42 and 3.50, and those that upgraded weren't able to run 3.41, which had the jailbreak vulnerability.
Sony upgraded its efforts when it revealed that new PS3 games will have a special requirement that will make them unplayable on consoles that have the 3.41 firmware.
Now though, it seems that the hackers have once again gained the upper hand on the Japanese company.