Symantec Discovers the First PSP Virus

Soon, owners of portable gaming consoles will be forced to add an antivirus to their collection of programs.

Symantec has discovered a trojan, which could be the first malware for portable console. While monitoring the PSP gamers' chat rooms, Symantec discovered that a file, touted as a mod that would allow a user to run other applications than those provided by Sony, was in fact a trojan, Trojan.PSPBrick, which can render the console unusable.

F-Secure also reported another trojan, which comes under the name of EXPLOIT 2G PSP Team V1.RAR. After it is installed, the malware will delete a series of vital folders on the PSP.

Symantec experts said that the process is irreversible and that it doesn't pose a serious threat to regular users, only to modders. Because of this, the trojan received the "low" rating.

Eric Chien, Principle Software engineer for Symantec, told Reuters that this trojan signifies the hackers' interest is expanding beyond PCs and cell phones and that any device capable of running applications can become a target.

Last week, the hackers released a downgrade for the PSP firmware, which allowed users to downgrade from the 2.0 version (officially published by) to 1.5 (which allowed the installation of private applications). Sony reacted and released the 2.1 version of the firmware.