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PS3 hypervisor hacked

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L

Lagspike_exe

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Right, another one of my "PS3 hacked" threads...

This time, the hack is apparently coming from a dude called George Hotz (since he has a big wiki article, that means that he is important).

He claims that he hacked hypervisor.

From twitter:

fine, one tweet... i just hacked the PS3... http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/
Click to expand...

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. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1.

3 years, 2 months, 11 days...thats a pretty secure system

Took 5 weeks, 3 in Boston, 2 here, very simple hardware cleverly applied, and some not so simple software.

Shout out to George Kharrat from iPhoneMod Brasil for giving me this PS3 a year and a half ago to hack. Sorry it took me so long :)

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.

A lot more to come...
Click to expand...

http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/2010/01/hello-hypervisor-im-geohot.html#comments
 
CCC'10 will be interesting if this turns out to be true. HV hacking isn't impossible it has already been done on the 360. I hope Sony finds a way to fix the security holes.
 
Hopefully we get the best elements of PSP custom firmware. I'm talking homebrew, emulators, PS1 EBOOT creation, registry hacks, and more video format support. Except this time, minimal piracy due to large Blu-ray downloads. Cautiously optimistic about this.
 
The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder.
Click to expand...

The tech of the PS3 would make it a mighty-powerful homebrew machine, and that's quite an exciting prospect. Could this develop into a full-hardware-access Linux port, for example? Possible porting of Linux-PC games?

Assuming this is all genuine, of course.
 
Wow... I just read the Wiki. Smart kid.

Why didn't I spend my teenage years doing things which would have got me that sort of money / possible jail time? :D
 
well congrats to sony for lasting this long if true

be interesting to see what comes about from this stuff... i remember when the psp was first beginning toget hacked and about half a year to a year later emulators and stuff blew up
 
Something very weird about his eyes.

bjj3hu.jpg
 
MasterTeacher said:
There's no real benefit to hacking the PS3
Click to expand...
MasterTeacher
Junior Member
(Today, 06:17 PM)

Even if this is true kudos to the team responsible for the PS3 security. The fact that it lasted this long is pretty astounding in this industry.
 
Psychotext said:
Wow... I just read the Wiki. Smart kid.

Why didn't I spend my teenage years doing things which would have got me that sort of money / possible jail time? :D
Click to expand...

dont the majority of smart people that do things like this end up in very nice paying security jobs?

makes sense, basically pay your bully to become your bodyguard

MasterTeacher said:
There's no real benefit to hacking the PS3
Click to expand...

eh the homebrew/media center capabilities of a higher end system could be great
 
Where hacking the PSP and Wii has mostly been nothing but positive -- able to run homebrew while still being able to play your retail games -- I have serious doubts that anything as substantial will be possible on the PS3. The scenario I can see is ultimately having to choose whether you want to play future releases (Sony WILL enforce bundled firmware updates that block the exploit) and utilize PSN OR want to run homebrew. Being able to use the PS3 as a fully decked out media center box would be amazing though.
 
Mama Robotnik said:
The tech of the PS3 would make it a mighty-powerful homebrew machine, and that's quite an exciting prospect. Could this develop into a full-hardware-access Linux port, for example? Possible porting of Linux-PC games?

Assuming this is all genuine, of course.
Click to expand...

Sadly WINE is out of the question since that only runs on X86 hardware. So that leaves a bunch of Quake3 mods and Quake3 based games, nothing special. Just give me a functioning Mplayer port and I will be satisfied.
 
we will have to see how this guy has done it but damn he has cracked the cell. Now it's just a case of this news reaching sony before all hell breaks loose!
 
This shit right here... this is the killer app Sony's been waiting for.

Forget Gran Turismo... piracy moves consoles like nothing else!

Though they're still taking hits on each console sold right?
 
The good news is that as a hypervisor attack it'll have utility beyond simple piracy. The bad news is, of course, that piracy will probably be enabled anyway.

I'm betting that it'll require a modchip, and be an amazing pain to install (solder points have shrunk a lot since the PS2...).


Oh, and four months after Sony officially crapped on the linux community by removing support for the Slim. I suspect there will be some "I told you so" emails floating around...
 
doesn't it say he needed hardware to hack it though? so i suppose it could lead to a modchip but i cant see that taking off.

also surely even if he can extract the decryption keys, you don't have the encryption key (or vice versa) so its useless to bypass the signing. did they ever crack the psp keys? i remember there was some effort too but if they had presumably the psp would be much easier to softmod
 
3 years, 2 months, 11 days...thats a pretty secure system
Click to expand...

And one firmware update to get back there. The 360 hypervisor was hacked a few years back, but unless you never updated your system since...
 
So can't sony like sue him or something?

The only development coming from this I might interesting is the PS2 emulation. Shouldn't you be able to grab the bios from the 80gig and trow it in any PS3. Sure the software emulation ain't perfect, but hey beats having nothing and home brewers can perfect it. I'm not really a fan of piracy on current gen concoles. If where talking about 15 year old games couldn't care less.
 
Zaptruder said:
This shit right here... this is the killer app Sony's been waiting for.

Forget Gran Turismo... piracy moves consoles like nothing else!

Though they're still taking hits on each console sold right?
Click to expand...

:lol

thats what ive always thought
 
I NEED SCISSORS said:
Hopefully we get the best elements of PSP custom firmware. I'm talking homebrew, emulators, PS1 EBOOT creation, registry hacks, and more video format support. Except this time, minimal piracy due to large Blu-ray downloads. Cautiously optimistic about this.
Click to expand...

I am not optimistic about this at all given small PSN downloads.


Niblet said:
Where hacking the PSP and Wii has mostly been nothing but positive
Click to expand...

I hope you allowing for in your "mostly" the damage caused by facilitating piracy, and developers/publishers dropping support for the platform in part due to that.
 
2San said:
So can't sony like sue him or something?

The only development coming from this I might interesting is the PS2 emulation. Shouldn't you be able to grab the bios from the 80gig and trow it in any PS3. Sure the software emulation ain't perfect, but hey beats having nothing and home brewers can perfect it. I'm not really a fan of piracy on current gen concoles. If where talking about 15 year old games couldn't care less.
Click to expand...

well the 80 gig still had 1 of the 2 chips in hardware from the ps2 (the GS i think, the EE was emulated in software).


edit: I kinda saw the writing on the wall for BC then thats why I grabbed the 80g mgs4 bundle.
 
2San said:
The only development coming from this I might interesting is the PS2 emulation. Shouldn't you be able to grab the bios from the 80gig and trow it in any PS3. Sure the software emulation ain't perfect, but hey beats having nothing and home brewers can perfect it.
Click to expand...

Isn't backward compatibility on the old 80GB models only partially software?
 
If this is true, than I will buy another PS3 JUST for the homebrew and keep my old one for PS3 use. I already have a modded Xbox 1 for homebrew but a modded PS3 would be a monster. Hopefully it can play my japanese PS2 games. One the subject of that, why hasn't anybody tried to get Japanese PS2 games running on a US PS3? It cant be THAT hard or complex. All you would have to do is DL a BIOS file...am I right?
 
ZombieSupaStar said:
well the 80 gig still had 1 of the 2 chips in hardware from the ps2 (the GS i think, the EE was emulated in software).


edit: I kinda saw the writing on the wall for BC then thats why I grabbed the 80g mgs4 bundle.
Click to expand...

Reginald P. Linux said:
Isn't backward compatibility on the old 80GB models only partially software?
Click to expand...
Yeah you guys are right. :O
 
I NEED SCISSORS said:
Hopefully we get the best elements of PSP custom firmware. I'm talking homebrew, emulators, PS1 EBOOT creation, registry hacks, and more video format support. Except this time, minimal piracy due to large Blu-ray downloads. Cautiously optimistic about this.
Click to expand...

Who said you'd have to download them? Every system has a built in HDD and Blu-ray burners are starting to appear for under $200 bucks with blank discs going for about $3.50 each.

Why in each of these threads do people assume that Blu-ray is safe because of the size of the disc? How many people cried that CD's were too big to download. Who would ever download a full DVD over a dial up modem?? These are naive thoughts at best.
 
I'll believe it when he posts a helloworld.app and a method of loading it.

Until then, this is just smoke up our asses.
 
Yeah, this is most likely legit, although it's not useful in any way yet. If it becomes useful, I'm looking forward to being able to do something as simple as installing games to HDD, like it was possible on PS2 eventually (with no disc in drive for the game you're playing, of course)
 
TheSeks said:
I'll believe it when he posts a helloworld.app and a method of loading it.

Until then, this is just smoke up our asses.
Click to expand...

The dude is for real. He doesn't lie about this shit.
 
Host Samurai said:
If this is true, than I will buy another PS3 JUST for the homebrew and keep my old one for PS3 use. I already have a modded Xbox 1 for homebrew but a modded PS3 would be a monster. Hopefully it can play my japanese PS2 games. One the subject of that, why hasn't anybody tried to get Japanese PS2 games running on a US PS3? It cant be THAT hard or complex. All you would have to do is DL a BIOS file...am I right?
Click to expand...
If you have a old 60gig and use the swap magic hack then you should be able to run *some* JP ps2 iso's but that's only my guess as I've yet to try it out.
 
Why is this guy so open with his personal information? I google image searched and found a photo of him for some sort of Intel internship. :lol

Surely, piracy can't be good for his CV,
although admittedly there's always interested parties
. Still, seems a bit naive to me. 'Doing it for the challenge' doesn't really hold up in court.
 
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