Oh dear. Remember when the PlayStation 3 was cracked a little while back – and it lead to fears of rampant piracy on Sony’s console? That never really materialised (though there ARE ways to circumvent the PlayStation 3’s security – they’re just too troublesome). Reports are coming in of a new hack that can turn retail consoles in to debug units – opening them up for homebrew, and piracy.
A Hong Kong hacker known as AnoRelease claims to have found a way to trick a standard Ps3 in to thinking that it’s a debug console – capable of running unsigned code. He’s released details of just how to do it – but it’s all really technicaly high-level gibberish, way beyond the scope and understanding of the everyman – so it’s unlikely that it’ll be used for wanton piracy. It also has a high chance of bricking the console – making for a rather expensive (but beautiful) doorstop. It also, apparently, bars access to PSN – so at least if there are going to be scummy pirates, we won’t have to play games with them.
What it does likely mean, for we legitimate users who’ve been through this before – as another barrage of cat-and-mouse updates from Sony.
Here’s a video, apparently, of the hack in action. Personally? Seems like too much trouble.
Last Updated: July 18, 2012
