14 DAY TRIAL // While the entire gaming industry struggled to deal with its Arch nemesis, piracy, Sony and its PlayStation 3 have managed to steer pretty much clear of such an issue. With a powerful combination of secure hardware and software implementation, along with the cumbersome to-tamper-with Blu-ray drive, the PS3 has pretty much secured that all the games played on it have been legally purchased. But that looks like it could change at any time, as it looks like the first steps toward mass-pirated PS3 games have been taken.
George Hotz has recently posted on his blog that he has successfully managed to tamper with the PS3'a hardware, and basically hack it. If the name doesn't sound very familiar, and thus not very trustworthy, then learn that he is also the guy that brought us the iPhone jailbreak. "I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3.The rest is just software. And reversing," he said. "I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip."
But he's not quite ready to make the actual knowledge public just yet. While his solutions to the PS3 defense aren't patchable, Sony could still hinder his accomplishment. "As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."
Even if this does turn out to be true, and Sony's "planetary defenses" have been corrupted, what he managed was a pretty remarkable feat. In Hotz's own words, the system took "3 years, 2 months, 11 days [to crack]...thats a pretty secure system." And if anybody knows about secure systems, then the guy that breaks them is definitely the one.