Police Raid PS3 Hacker's House, Hacker Releases PS3 'Hypervisor Bible'

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from PSGroove.com: "Graf_chokolo, who has contributed countless things to the PS3 scene, had his private home raided by police this morning. They confiscated all of his 'accounts' and anything related to PS3 hacking. Some of you may remember that graf_chokolo promised if he was pushed, that he would release all of his PS3 hypervisor knowledge to the world. He kept good on this promise, releasing what is being dubbed as the Hypervisor Bible. 'The uploaded files contains his database, which is a series of tools for the PS3's Hypervisor and Hypervisor processes. It will help other devs to reverse engineer the hypervisor of PS3 further.'"

Comments

My PS3 - I can do what I want with it

[commodore6502]

I think Sony is only a few months away from being told exactly the same thing by the US and EU governments. i.e. Just as cellphones can be jailbroken, so too can consoles.

Re:My PS3 - I can do what I want with it

[commodore6502]

>>>However, they can still refuse to offer you PSN services.

Yep.

I'm okay with that. Still that doesn't mean I should be arrested for modding MY console. If Sony ever tries, and my life is ruined because of it (like what RIAA did to Jammie Thomas and other victims), the CEO might as well consider himself equivalent to Mubarak (i.e. a liberty-suppressing tyrant).

Oh and I'm not sure why people think I'm "trolling" or anti-sony??? The PS1 and 2 were my favorite consoles. 10 years of great gameplaying (1995-2005) so I'm hardly anti-sony.

Re:My PS3 - I can do what I want with it

[HappyHead]

Companies like Sony have no choice but to do whatever they can in order to make money for their shareholders, that is their only duty in the capitalist system we live in. If they think they can make more money by being nice they will, but if they can make more money by being bastards as is usually the case then they have to do that instead.

That's not how it works.

One of the effects of unethical behavior is that people start to not like you, and protest your actions. This costs you money, and is part of the capitalist system you are saying we should be forgiving them because of - instead, we should be embracing that capitalist system, and making sure that they lose money every time they do something stupid, unethical, or just plain evil. Occupy their time, give them bad press so that people stop buying their products, and every time you do so, make absolutely sure that the reason they are losing money is clear - if the dog craps on the carpet, you don't just sigh and whine to politicians - you rub their nose in it and tell them BAD DOG! And when a corporation misbehaves and pisses on all of their customers, they need to have their noses rubbed in it and be told BAD COMPANY!.

That "duty to the shareholders" you talk about? If unethical behavior actually resulted in losses, then duty to the shareholders would prevent it. People like you who whine "Don't hate the evil company for being evil! Hate the politicians who let them!" are just encouraging them, the same way that petting the dog and ignoring what it has done wrong every time it craps on your carpet encourages it to keep crapping on your carpet.

Re:My PS3 - I can do what I want with it

[Blue Stone]

What's amazing to me is the different way that the police forces are treating these hardware tinkerers with Sony itself, which instigated and distributed a massive campaign of installing rootkits on people's computers. Utterly illegal, and yet the Sony CEO or whoever didn't get his door battered in at 6am.

One law for the serfs and a different, more lenient set of 'rules' for the our lords and masters.

Re:Cheating

[Nailer235]

Something may need to be done, but does that "something" preclude people from using a product that they purchased by busting down their door and stealing all their equipment? Remember back in the old days when people would take things apart just to learn how they worked? Old toasters, microwaves, circuitry sets, etc. It really seems like we're forgetting that whole aspect of learning.

The moral/practical lesson of this story is

[unity100]

DONT buy sony. dont let anyone around you, buy sony.

Re:Cheating

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree with the way Sony is doing it, but at least they are doing something. Some of the multiplayer games are completely unplayable as cheating is rampant. Something needs to be done as they're ruining the games for honest players.

Server-side checks: You don't have to Like Blizzard's "got-to-be-online-to-play" for Starcraft II, but notice: no cheating, with 1000000+ connected users and a easy to hack platform (PC+Mac).

If your game uses p2p connections and no gameplay server, some care in designing the protocol will make it much harder to cheat. Deterministic sync'hing with input passing, for example, will provide you a no-cheating solution. There's many other options.

Problem with cheating is that about no one in the industry cares about quality. Don't go justifying Sony's action on gamer's cheating. Find something better.

Re:Cheating

[ciderbrew]

I'd rather the enjoyment of people games be ruined than have a state that kicks down doors because a person too apart a bit of kit they own.

Follow the Money

[realxmp]

For Sony it's not really about cheating, it's about getting their royalty every time a game is sold. It's the same reason why "Other OS" wasn't allowed full access to the processing power of the PS3. If writing games in Linux had become a viable option on the PS3 then at least some companies would have considered distributing some of their content that way, saving themselves a huge margin. Incidentally cheating will always be an issue if your game's server trusts the client excessively anyway.

P.S. The photo

[commodore6502]

Was it really necessary for the police to wear Riot gear and Bust down the door? Did they think this gamer was going to beat them with a ps3 controller??? I bet they shot his little dog too (standard operating procedure).

Jeez. All they needed to do was knock and say, "We have a warrant to search your home," like polite servants. - Stupid SA

Re:P.S. The photo

[rwven]

I think the more important question is....what laws did the guy break in the first place? Did he break ANY or is this just another case of the idiotic way americans bow down and worship business?

the new ISA

[BizzyM]

Welcome to the Incorporated States of America. The Pledge of Allegiance will now be an EULA that school children will be forced to scroll through and click "Agree" on every morning for 12 years.

Re:the new ISA

[linuxrocks123]

I believe this took place in Germany, although it took a lot of digging to find that out.

---linuxrocks123

Is anyone else scared?

[ZorinLynx]

Is anyone else scared that companies such as Sony have the power to make the police do their bidding and break into peoples' private homes?

What the fuck is going on in our country?

Re:P.S. The photo

[bberens]

The police don't determine whether you've done something illegal. The courts do. But I am on your side that whatever crime he's being accused of is clearly non-violent so having the police bash down the door is silly at best and probably quite dangerous for everyone involved.