Slashdot Mirror
Open Source PS3 Jailbreak Released
tlhIngan writes "Despite all the lawsuits and injunctions by Sony to keep the PS3 Jailbreak out of modder's hands, it appears that a third party has made a clone. The best part is, it only requires a cheap (approximately $40) development board by Atmel, and the requisite software is open-source. Get the Atmel code from GitHub and apply a small patch which will enable backup play (the code by itself only lets you run unsigned code, the patch allows for BD backups). The code is GPLv3. It would be highly ironic if someone ported this to Linux USB Gadgets, then you could use a Linux device to jailbreak your PS3, to which Sony removed Linux functionality. An Android phone would be suitable."
"It would be highly ironic if someone ported this to Linux USB Gadgets, then you could use a Linux device to jailbreak your PS3"
Nice way to ask an entire community of nerds to do that for you!
Now, let's get working!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
The closed source patch that fixes the exploit used by the open source project.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
All Sony has to do is sign their firmware, and make it so that the hardware won't accept anything other than Sony approved updates.
Do they do that already?
Oh, and another solution: Mark updates with an expiration date such that the unit will refuse to run if its firmware is too stale.
From the looks of things, the entire jailbreak is reliant on the PS3 being cold booted and the user having to press eject as the PS3 powers on to make it read the code from the USB key. If Sony can block this through a firmware update then that's the end of the jailbreak isn't it?
Obviously the user simply doesn't update their PS3...
Summation 2
I've been at work every time I've seen an article come up about the jailbreak, so I haven't had time to go digging for details (including the links off this article; I don't want to push my work's internet filter). Does anyone have an explanation as to how this jailbreak actually works? Every article I've seen doesn't go into the details other than saying it's a magic USB dongle you plug in. Can Sony even patch this hole?
HOT FROM SONY SITE:
Downloading and installing the PlayStation®3 system software update will update your PS3 system's operating system to include the latest security patches, settings, features and other items. We encourage you to check this page from time to time for system software updates and to always maintain your system to use the latest version of the system software.
An update to the PS3 system software will be was released on September 27, 2010. You can use this update to upgrade your system software to version 3.43.
English EspañolFrançais
Notices
* Do not download or install updates using data other than official update data provided online or on disc media by Sony Computer Entertainment, and do not download or install updates by methods other than those described in the system documentation or on this website. If you download or install update data from another source, by another method, or with a PS3 system that has been altered or modified in any way, the PS3 system may not operate properly and may not be able to install the official update data. Any of these actions may void the PS3 system warranty and affect your ability to obtain warranty services and repair services from Sony Computer Entertainment.
* This update is for PS3 systems purchased in North America. DO NOT update your PS3 system through this website if you purchased your system outside North America. There is no guarantee of proper operation with models sold outside North America.
* The system software and system software updates installed on your system are subject to a limited license from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Visit http://www.scei.co.jp/ps3-eula for details.
* If your PS3 system software version is 3.43 (or later), you do not need to perform this update. To check the version of your system software, go to > (Settings) > (System Settings) > [System Information]. The information is shown in the [System Software] field.
* The [Install Other OS] and [Default System] features have been deleted in system software versions 3.21 and later. You will not be able to use [Install Other OS] or [Default System] under (Settings) > (System Settings). See the Consumer Alerts page for more details.
* To play some software or use some features, you may first need to update the system software.
* Depending on your PS3 system software version, the screen images and icons that are used on this website may differ from those that appear on your system.
* This version will disable USB ports due to security issues. If you have to USB peripherals you will have to to replace them with wireless versions. See the Consumer Alerts page for more details.
...to sue everybody who buys an Atmel development board. Wasn't it some satellite that went down the list of people who had bought mag card writers and threatened to sue them, regardless of what the mag card writer was being used for?
After the knee-jerk reaction of removing Linux support from the PS3 (which I actually used), I can really imagine Sony contemplating such stupidity.
F them, I'm going to play Nethack; still better than most of the games available on the PS3 anyway.
I had been holding off on the PS3 firmware update until the first jailbreak came out, presumably the USAF/DARPA can use this to 'unlock' any supercomputing PS3s they have?
much like the PSP Slim TA088v3 motherboard which til current day still unhackable. Dark Alex has retired so.....
New Economic Perspectives
http://www.ps3news.com/PS3-Dev/ps-jailbreak-ps3-exploit-reverse-engineering-is-detailed/
It emulates a six-port hub and connects/disconnects devices with corrupted descriptors (that have their size changed on-the-fly!) in a particular order to smash the Heap so you can use a corrupted malloc boundary tag to overwrite the call to free() so that after the failed Jig authentication tries to release the memory allocated for the cryptographic response it will launch the shell code that was dropped into memory using a USB descriptor.
It brings a tear to my eye. Truly, one of the most beautiful things I ever had the privilege of understanding.
:(){
Atmel boards are used for meny other things and stern pinball use them in there pinball games.
If they are used in pinball game and many other ticket games as well other embed systems you can just do mass suing.
It would be interesting if this thing was ported to the PSP and the PSP could be used to unlock the PS3
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
but steeling sat tv is not the same as running your own code / Linux on a box that you own and it not like you can useing and they just get games for free by just hookinh the hacked box up like how it was with sat tv hack the card hook up the dish and get free HBO.
I have been a PC gamer for years, but that doesn't mean that some games and genres don't work better on consoles. When was the last time you played a good party game on the PC (Worms would be my most recent, and that feels like ages ago)? How about a 2d fighting game?
I just ordered a PS3 yesterday for the purpose of playing Blazblue with friends. Sure, there is an arcade version of the game that I can torrent and play on my PC, but the input feels like shit (even with a PS3 or XBOX360 controller) and it has no online play.
Of course, when it comes to first person shooters, nothing can beat a good duel in almost any of the Quake series on PC.
Piracy, online cheating, support hassles? These don't ring like a reason why a company would care?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Because PCs suck for gaming.
Inconsistent rigs, inconsistent play experiences, having to chase an upgrade path every 2 or 3 years versus 5 to 6 to play games(Seriously, you take 250 bucks and buy a computer that'll do Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 at 1080p and act as a slick BluRay player.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
You foolish fools! Defeating DRM will let the terrorists win! Already another oil platform has exploded due to evil hackers playing unsigned content on the PS3!
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
If it's one of the usual Atmel parts, you can probably use Digi-Key.ca
Extremely fast shipping, no customs fees.
Actually jailbreak is about breaking free of the restrictions of any locked down system. The term "jail" is an old one that has been used in Unix-like operating systems for a long time. The iPhone, to my understanding uses a unix-like directory tree and limits your access to that tree by making a jail not terribly dissimilar to those in other unix-like operating systems.. therefore the usage of the term "jail" and "jailbreaking."
It is, but it's also on Sony if they want to make it as difficult as humanly possible, because in order to accomplish what you want, you're opening the system to being exploited for cheating, piracy, and other problems. do you not see how this is mutually exclusive to what you want? They can't leave the door open and say, "No pirates please." and expect that wish to be granted.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Does this jailbreak HW let programmers access the RSX videochip that the PS3 hypervisor kept locked out from Linux apps? If only for the extra 256MB (V)RAM that lets real sized apps run under Linux, but especially to get to the 1.8TFLOPS RSX, the real powerhouse of the platform. Otherwise all the graphics/video has to be rendered directly by the Cell CPU. Since there isn't a video driver that uses the Cell's SPUs, all that has to be done by the 3.2GHz PPC at the core of the Cell, which is also handling all the other app processing. Offloading graphics to the RSX graphics chip would finally unleash this beast.
Write PS3 games without paying $100K to Sony for their "development kit". Run all your Linux desktop and dev stuff. Much more likely that developers will code for the SPUs, and finally tap the potential of that "game supercomputer".
OTOH, if the jailbreak is only for pirating PS3 games, then Sony has done nothing but shoot itself in the foot by locking legit Linux developers out of the platform. And in that case, I've got two original fat PS3s for sale.
--
make install -not war
The PS3Jailbreak device is selling a circumvention device that's advertised for piracy purposes.
Cry me a god damned river. If Dark aleX were in jail, sure, let's talk, but, he wasn't charging $150 for his services.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Just get the Atmel AVC software, emulate the chip, and use a USB interface from a laptop.
I've already tested it out, and using the JTAGICE in combo with it means you can use your computer to 'unlock' your PS3 and the 360.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. ... Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
It's been five fucking years! Dark Alex hasn't put out firmware in at least a year!
If they were going to get him, they'd have gotten him already. Is it sue happy when someone's PROFITING off of pirating your software or circumventing your copy control? Would it be any different if Nintendo started suing everyone who sold the BannerBomb exploit?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Additionally if the new games only care about the version field, but not any new functions or what have you in the latest version of the firmware then all you need to do is hack your version tag to spit back what the game is looking for and problem solved, game runs, because they used to assume that the version number could only be changed by sony. Since that's no longer true, you can tell the game whatever you want and simply ignore updating the firmware until such time as a game actually breaks while looking for functionality that's only in newer firmware.
I believe this is similar to what users of the Homebrew Channel on the Wii do. It's a little more complicated because games don't check the Home Channel version, instead looking for a particular iOS, which is only installed, in normal circumstances, by the Wii System Update. Of course, Homebrew users (and pirates, I assume) just download and install the required iOS images manually (in fact, there's a Homebrew app that automates the process)
I had a sig once. It was lost in the great storm of '09.
for the jailbreak software to send off an anonymous "Fuck You, Sony" email from the machine in question back to Sony HQ.
About a week ago, I said on IRC that if the legal quagmire around the PSJailbreak drags on, they should just opensource the whole thing. Sure, there'd be less money to be made for their effort (Not that they're able to sell the things right now anyway) but Sony would be pretty hard-pressed to completely suppress the device.
I was impressed by the gesture they made in removing the bootleg playing capability from the version of the code they released, even if the community ultimately turned it into a rather hollow gesture. (But they gained full deniability, way to go!) Their reference design is ugly as sin though. When I make an EagleCAD schematic/board from the design they released, I'll be sure to design a nice, compact, all-SMT version too. :3 Maybe even one that doesn't need the USB port, like it has 'gold fingers' on the end and just slips into the port.
I don't even own a PS3 and I want to make one just for the hell of it. I already have a couple AT90USB chips I haven't used yet.
btw, the Atmel devboard can be had for $30, and the 'Teensy' microcontroller boards can be had for as little as $17. Of course, they're all out of stock now, heh. If you have the know-how to make the board, the components hardly add up to $10.
Maybe I should have a couple-few PCBs churned out the next time I order some prototypes from Gold Phoenix. Strictly for my friends, of course. :D
If someone wanted to start selling these things, the smart thing to do would be to just more or less sell a 'general purpose' board, like the Teensy, and leave it up to the end user to find and install the code. Zero liability, really. Just don't call the thing 'ZOMGPS3HAX2.0' or be all *wink wink* *nudge nudge* in the product description.
(I'm totally getting sued, aren't I?)
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
If we buy something, we own it. We will do with it whatever we please, as is our right. Any and all attempts to tell us what to do with something we own will only ensure that we break whatever controls you try to use.
Yes. Let's feel bad for poor Sony, the little company who's being bullied by those evil pirates into simply trying to protect their property. Obviously they have no choice of how to respond to hobbyist tinkering except to continue to push anti-consumer restrictions after the fact. Let's point the blame at those who see Sony boasting about their unbreakable system and think "O rly?", then work on hacking it. They're all just pirates anyway, pirates holding a gun to Sony's head.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
I would imagine that sony will be able to fix this eventually and we'll back to the wall garden. We need hypervisor under sony's hypervisor so that future system updates can't remove the backdoor.
Where did you get that idea?
The SIM card is already "Unlocked" in as much as you can put it in any phone you like. The locked part of an iPhone is the iOS itself, which will only run approved binaries until it's jailbroken.
Cool and all, but the PS3 has always been pretty worthless due to the hypervisor. Unless that is bypassed really well at some point, it will continue to be a very sub-par desktop. I had a Linux HTPC/server replace it long ago and I've never looked back. Much rather have room on the PS3 hard drive for games anyway. Not that this isn't an important project for those who have PS3s but no HTPCs, or don't want both, but with how cheaply you can get a more-than-decent HTPC for there isn't much reason not to.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Right, because it's not douche bag material to suggest that Sony open their console to piracy, hacks and cheats just to make %1 of it's userbase happy.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Seriously, you take 250 bucks and buy a computer that'll do Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 at 1080p and act as a slick BluRay player.
I'm assuming that since you are posting on Slashdot you own a PC. I would be willing to bet that if you added an additional $250 worth of parts to your existing computer (or added that $250 to your budget for the next one) you would have a machine that is more than capable of both of those requirements.
having to chase an upgrade path every 2 to 3 years versus 5 to 6 to play games
I have to admit you are a little closer to correct than most console advocates (I've seen people say upgrades were required every 6 months to a year) but you are still a bit off. I was recently browsing my newegg purchase history and I accidentally discovered that it's been a full two years since I built my current gaming rig. I was shocked to discover it's been that long. I can still play any modern game pretty much maxed out so I have no desire to upgrade any time soon. If I really wanted to I could probably stretch the life of that machine another 3 years or so but I wouldn't be playing anything maxed out. On the other hand, every console fanboy I know will readily admit that CODMW2 looks better at 1080p on the PC than it does on a console due to better/more flexible hardware. In 2 years when the xbox 360 is EOL even the newest games will look like crap compared to their PC counterparts. With a PC you could easily spend $150 half way through the 5 year life cycle for a video card upgrade and still have beautiful graphics if you want. Of course you could still run the game on lower settings and it will be comparable to the console's.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
Worms would be my most recent, and that feels like ages ago
What, last week?
It mostly has come to mean breaking free of the signature required code found on iPhone. It most certainly is NOT something involving SIM cards - that would be "unlocking".
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org