Widespread PS3 Piracy

   With news that the PSGroove has been ported over to the iPhone 1G, iPhone 3G, and iPod Touch (first-generation), even more devices are now capable of breaking the Playstation 3 wide open for piracy. I knew Sony was in trouble when I heard from my tweenage cousin (who's hardly ever online or tech-savvy) that he was able to get someone from school to Jailbreak his PS3 with a phone. He didn't specify which phone but I'm guessing an Android phone. I reminded him that piracy was unethical and he responded with the following, "Well, I'm just a kid and I can't afford to pay $60 + tax for a game."

   If the lay people like my little cousin are getting their Playstations hacked, then the malaise of piracy is going to spread fairly far and wide over the course of the next year. I foresee a lot of banning, a lot of patches, and a lot of firmware updates in the PS3's future but the genie's out of the bottle and there'll be no way to trap him inside ever again.

PS3 Firmware 3.42 Released

   Sony released the PS3 3.42 firmware yesterday. The update patches the security exploit that was present in firmware 3.41 which allowed the PS3 Jailbreak and the patched PSGroove to circumvent the Playstation 3's security measures against "backups" and replay of those backups. The official announcement is linked below:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/09/06/playstation-3-system-software-update-v3-42-now-available/
PlayStation 3 System Software Update v3.42 Now Available

Posted by John Koller // Director, Hardware Marketing
Hi everyone! A minor update to your PS3 system is now available via system software update v3.42 that includes additional security features. For more details and instructions on how to update the system software for the PS3 system, please visit the PS3 System Updates page.

Jailbreak Injunction Decision Tomorrow

   An Australian Federal Court will decide tomorrow if the injunction against the sale of the Playstation 3 Jailbreak becomes permanent. I've bet $30 on a wager against a scenester that the ban stays and the mod sellers are SOL. Why $30? That was all I had in my pocket at the time we were shooting the shit about mods and pondering the history of the universe. The Jailbreak issue is probably moot however because the PSGroove is out and in the wild.

   The PSGroove project was revealed a couple of days ago but it's an ethical hack. Piracy isn't enabled on the USB injection code but it's only a matter of time before someone re-enables the piracy features so that game dumps to HDD and backups are playable. Once a hack like that is released, it's out there forever and free for anyone to use, modify, and engineer for whatever reason. That's the nature of the internet where all of your embarrassing photos, dumb lines, and dick jokes are saved on someone's server or hard drive for all of eternity.

PS3 Jailbreak Broken

   A software developer who goes by the name Mathieu Hervais has apparently hacked and dumped (copied) the contents of the Jailbreak USB dongle and released it as an open source project under the name "PSGroove." The exploit files are listed on Github under the psgroove subfolder. The zip file that's been released into filesharing networks contains five hexadecimal data files which can be programmed into the following Atmel AT90USB microcontrollers:

AT90USB162
AT90USB646

AT90USB647

AT90USB1286

AT90USB1287

ATMEGA32U4

   The microcontrollers plug into the USB port of a PC or console to retrieve on-board documentation and run AVR program code. Disane explains the code injection process below:

"This is the disassembled PPC code more like the shell code that is being injected. The best way would be to use the lv2 dump and this to figure out how the stack overflow exploit works in the USB buffer of the PS3 after that it can be reproduced on any FW. On both slim and fat PS3s.
The JIG ID is probably passed to trigger some code pathern which the Configuration Descriptor overflows and injects the shell code after that the code gets executed. The shell code patches lv2 to run fselfs and all kinds of interesting flags which I haven’t noticed yet…"

   Skimming over the message boards and IRC, there's obvious excitement brewing today over the possibility of low cost Jailbreak clones. One poster on a popular message board asked if he could burn the .hex files onto a disc and Jailbreak his PS3 that way.

   From the instructions that were released last night:

To use this exploit:
• Hard power cycle your PS3 (using the switch in back, or unplug it)
• Plug the dongle into your PS3.
• Press the PS3 power button, followed quickly by the eject button.
After a few seconds, the first LED on your dongle should light up. After about 5 seconds, the second LED will light up (or the LED will just go off, if you only have one). This means the exploit worked! You can see the new "Install Package Files" menu option in the game menu.

Notes

• A programmed dongle won't enumerate properly on a PC, so don't worry about that.

• This software is not intended to enable piracy, and such features have been disabled. This software is intended to allow the execution of unsigned third-party apps and games on the PS3.