Sony Could Remotely Disable Jailbroken PS3’s

You’re aware by now that the PS3’s been hacked wide open; the public release of its root keys mean coders can sign apps to natively run on the PS3 without Sony’s consent. some tinkering has even lead to pirated games running directly from the XMB, as if they were PSN games.

You’re probably wondering what sort of punitive measures, if any, that Sony might mete out.Their responses to the threats of piracy. Will they, like Microsoft in the past, ban users from their online service? Quite probably; but according to Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry, they’re capable of doing far more.

According to their report, every time you boot up your internet-connected PS3 – whether you’ve signed up for PSN or not – your PS3 sends a host of logs – like recently played titles – and other information to Sony, and receives just as much information; PSN preview information, what’s new on the PSN store etc.

If you’re playing “back-ups” or homebrew on your PS3 and it’s got an internet connection, Sony almost certainly knows about it. According to their terms and conditions, that’s enough to net you a ban, temporary or otherwise. Furthermore, Sony apparently has the means to disable your PS3 remotely, and irrevocably – meaning it won’t work again, whether online or off.

They likely wouldn’t resort to such drastic measures, considering the inevitable backlash they’d face, but it’s worth noting that running unlicenced code on your PS3 probably just isn’t worth it.

The other side of the coin is that with the level of access hackers now have to the PS3’s inner working, they could probably disable such reporting and killswitch features.

Source : Eurogamer

Last Updated: January 12, 2011