Slashdot Mirror
Geohot Denies Involvement In PSN Hack Attack
Stoobalou writes "Soon-to-be-celebrity hacker and thorn in Sony's side George 'Geohot' Hotz has denied any involvement in the ongoing breach at the PlayStation Network. The 21-year-old hacker — who is best known for creating the first software-based hack for the iPhone, and getting hypervisor access and exposing the root key to the PlayStation 3 — has made it clear that he had nothing to do with filleting Sony's online gaming servers, saying 'I'm not crazy.'"
Why would he be involved? Holtz is becoming a useless keyword to generate 'news'.
Stop pulling these stories off the hose just because there's nothing else interesting.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
And you will create hundreds of new Geohots.
such is the rule of internet underground since days of old. the worst anyone can do, is to create conditions for a crusade against themselves in regard to morals. after that, it doesnt matter who or what you are - they will hack you. and the ones doing the hacking wont be small fish.
the bigger the bastardry, the greater honors those who hack them gains in the internet underworld.
but who am i telling these to - anyone who had had participated in anything in the early stages of internet, knows these.
Read radical news here
...when I found out he decided to give up on fighting Sony. He was in the perfect position to score one for "good" but he folded like everyone else in that position. Regardless if he is donating the $ to EFF or whatever, that money I donated was to fight Sony specifically. If I wanted to donate to someone else I would have done that. Even if he was involved in this, I doubt anyone really cares what he does anymore.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Hotz is one of a long line of "leet haxors" who take all of the credit for some of the work. If anyone actually spent more time researching than Wikipedia and the tabloid tech rag echo chamber (but I repeat myself), they'd get over this lone geek hero worship thing and realise that pretty much all achievements are the result of teamwork, within the mainstream and without. It's a shame, really, because I see so many young and promising people disillusioned by not being able to come up to the standards of heroes lauded in the tech media - not realising that they're just the spokesperson for a much larger group of people (who often have not consented to have all the credit taken from them).
Anyway, I'm not surprised that Hotz has managed to make what amounts to a press release stating what he has not done. Such is the way of attention whores. He also isn't responsible for arranging protests at the royal wedding tomorrow and isn't being invited by China to contribute toward the robotic clean-up effort at Fukushima.
mod parent up.
This is mudslinging, there are no rational reasons to believe he would be involved.
Reporters asking thoughtless questions is hardly news, nothing to see here.
"Anyone who thinks I was involved in any way with this, I'm not crazy, and would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door. Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool, hacking into someone else's server and stealing databases of user info is not cool. You make the hacking community look bad, even if it is aimed at douches like Sony."
/. and similar technology related blogs and news aggregators.
Here's the other half that doesn't usually get picked up - people are generally apathetic to this whole situation. Many people don't even know who Geohot is, and most likely don't care either. The ones who are most vocal about the network being offline are the ones who are online 24/7 anyways. Although i'm addressing this to a crowd that generally basement dwells, people generally have lives and most won't even notice. I have hundred and hundreds of "friends" on Facebook, some who I know are heavily into technology and console gaming, and practically nothing has been mentioned except for what i'm seeing posted on
tldr: Geohot is taking advantage by not taking advantage, and generally no one really cares outside of the circle.
People ask Anonymous if this was THEIR fault, despite claims that an attack on the PSN would damage its users more than Sony. Headline does not produce desired ratings.
Let's start a pool and take bets on who the perpetrator is. I'll take Iran (just because it's a longshot) and the US government (just for the conspiracy factor).
In regards to the perpetrator of the PSN attack.
1. The Master Control Program, who does he calculate he is??!
2. Sorry I put the new X-Files Collector edition BluRay in and it went crazy.
3. I for one welcome our new PSN overlords.
4. Still think Skynet isn't real??
5. The W.O.P.R. was running another simulation.
Do you honestly think he could win ANY court cases when dealing with a billion dollar company like Sony? They have lawyers on retainer so it costs them the same either way. You'd fold up too given the decision. If you want to fight Sony so bad man up and file a lawsuit yourself. His accomplishment is pretty amazing considering the money Sony can throw at locking you out.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
well there isnt that many ps3 gamers anyways. being hacked wide open and now the week long psn crash has probly finished this console from ever being anything but a after thought. any of the hardcore gamers have probly sold them off for 360 systems and now relised that 50$ a year is well worth it heh.
George Hotz was suspended and possibly expelled for "hacking" the student IDs, which were also used as access cards to unlock rooms on campus. I'm not saying he broke into PSN, but to call the guy a white hat is laughable.
The headlines are working fast to turn him into the main suspect. A couple of hours ago it was like 'geohot says: wouldn't dare to do that', now it says 'geohot denies' as if he already was a suspect, tomorrow he will be in jail based on evidence gathered by fox news.
FCKGW 09F9 42
That's probably why Sony got filleted, and probably deserves it. Instead of improving security of their system and admit defeat, using legal system to circumvent. This is not the first time, and looks like Sony does not learn. Might be bringing down their profitable department will finally wake them up (and hopefully others).
I disagree with his statement. Stealing databases with user info is only "not cool" if you do something with them. Having a bunch of 1's and 0's stored in a lock box doesn't hurt anyone. It still would make life awfully fun for Sony. Sadly I doubt this will be the outcome in this particular case.
That wasn't Mr. Holtz, that was Mr. Karma. However, I'm sure Sony is really pissed off and there's little reason not to take it out on Mr. Holtz by dragging him through the court system a few times.
I mean honestly, it's as relevant. Who the hell would have even though it?
Other than a Fox news reporter who equates a hardware hacker with a script kiddie or criminal cracker.
Is he going to deny involvement in my PS3 controller's batteries failing?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
These guys did: http://blog.iphone-dev.org/
"well there isnt that many ps3 gamers anyways"
77 million isn't many? What bizarro world did you come from?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Who thought "Geocities? Geocities still exists? Wait what is Geocities doing hacking Sony?"
Number of consoles sold does not equal number of gamers.
The PS3 isn't just a game console and I personally know several people who don't play games on theirs. It's just for playing movies.
I didn't have anything to do with it. Honest.
I'm sure he didn't actually participate directly in the attack, but it's stretching the truth quite far to say he "had nothing to do with it".
"Outdated business models" is code for "I don't like paying for things, but want them anyway"
I think a Sony employee connected a usb drive to a server and made a copy of a db export.
Come on, really!
I'm actually suprised people are still supporting a Video Game console with a shockingly (almost criminal) failure rate, massive levels of piracy & online cheating, forced payment to play online and no freedom to use your own peripherals or storage devices.
What sort of person puts up with that?
All his hacking and security breaking started this shit. Everyone the net turned into modern day hippies saying "Yeah down with the evil corporations! Go geohot you da man! Yeah crack your ps3 so you can take back what sony stole from you! Breaking security on your console is good because sony doesnt want you to!"
Then anon joined the fray and made it worse and now we have this.
So to anyone who ever said hacking your ps3 to get back other os or any of that other shit then this is what happens when you do that, all it takes is one guy to break the rules and fuck it all up.
Stealing info from a business DOES cost them money, no matter what you do with it. It cost alot of money to contact 100,000 people that their information was stolen as well as investigating the hack. More generally, in some industries a breach in security like this can result in mandatory credit monitoring paid for by the company.
in short breaches do cost money, even if no one gets their identity stolen.
btw, Sony is a crappy company. any chance of me buying from them went out the door a long time ago when they took the dual boot feature away.
77 million accounts = 77 million gamers - are you even capable of critical thinking or are you another Sony Shill?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Persons who buy the new versions that don't explode, work quite sliently, flash them to play pirated games (sorry, you meant that as a downside??), and use their own DX-bought hard drives on it, for half the price of a ps3.
Oh, and don't care about online gaming :)
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
..and began its attack against humanity on April 21
First it gains access to all playstation3's running in the world, uses the powerful cell processor in an enormous computing cluster. Nobody ever suspects playstation3's as the brain of skynet.
Second it steals millions of peoples information and using it begins to wreak havoc on the world financial system by creating systematic fraud piece by piece.
Third it creates a worm which penetrates into defunct Pontiac and Saturn factories and uses the assembly line robots to create terminators.
There's only 50 million PS3s in circulation. And creating an account is free, so one person can create as many as they'd like.
And why the hell would a Sony shill say that the network was less popular than it really is?
An anecdote for your statement. My step-brother recently bought a PS3 & replaced most of his 360 games because his recently out of warranty 360 decided to die exactly one day after he upgraded the (non-custom) firmware on it for the very first time. I tried to get him to just upgrade his PC into a gaming rig instead, but he wouldn't have it.
I hate Sony as much as anyone else on /., but you just make yourself look like an idiot saying things like that.
There is a war going on for your mind.
that those dumb@$$es at Sony used a simple variation on the root key to secure things on PSN and their CC db?
All he wanted was a pepsi and sony wouldn't give it to him!
People complain about lots of dumb things on Facebook, but usually not things that will make them look like non-conforming members of their social groups. In other words, nobody's going to label themselves as a basement dweller by getting vocal about the PSN on Facebook.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I couldn't anything past sony maybe they created a crisis so as to clamp down on this kid and other so called hackers.
I could be wrong but as history has taught us.............
Stealing databases with user info is only "not cool" if you do something with them. Having a bunch of 1's and 0's stored in a lock box doesn't hurt anyone. It still would make life awfully fun for Sony. Sadly I doubt this will be the outcome in this particular case.
I disagree with you here; people who know that their account information has been taken may have no option but to cancel or request new credit cards, altering all sorts of profiles where the same or similar security questions have been asked and contacting credit bureaus to have a fraud alert put in place.
As a PS3 owner (who is using it exclusively for a DVD player for the 2 years I've owned it with the exception of 1 hour logged playing God of War II) I now have to do all of the above because Sony's servers weren't secured sufficiently. I'm also hoping to purchase a house soon, so the fraud alert on my credit report will make the process that much harder. And that's all without the person(s) who stole the 77 million accounts doing anything specific with the data.
People stealing other people's data is bad; what the thieves do or do not do with that information only serves to make their actions even more wrong.
I love how your implication is that there is this invisible almighty righteous army of hundreds of people just sitting around, entirely idle, with the experience to do encryption hardware hacking, the time and patience to do it (i.e. no job and/or social life), the desire to do it (as opposed to, I don't know, PLAYING FUCKING GAMES ON THE DAMN GAME CONSOLE
your description is actually quite correct. there is that invisible almighty righteous army of really hundreds of people, doing all those kinds of things, going about around the internet, with experience much more bigger than encrption hardware hacking, the time, and the patience and the will and drive to do it. and they DO play games on consoles and pc, and do more things. they dont even understand what you understand from 'social life' either.
that is the deep underground of the internet, and it is not even what you can see in demonstrations of chaos computer club, or other high level scenes. that is the level of underground of the internet that is so 'down and under' and to the extreme that, it is at a level that can make the hardliner government of israel change its mind about not letting a hacker convention take place in israel, just with a correspondence from one of them which could be summarized into a meaning like 'dont'.
yea. such people whom even most hardliner government of the planet does not want to upset, exists. both because upsetting one of them, is upsetting their entire circle, and keeping them happy means they can actually make use of them in these matters related to 'cyberspace'.
yea, they do have their own ethics. even stronger so than a normal man would have. however, their sense of right or wrong, probably doesnt overlap with yours, or mine. they move according to their own ethics and rules, and for good or for worse, you cant herd them through any means.
and on top of that, there are layers of layers of others which are increasingly less skilled and extreme, but more in numbers as levels go up.
Read radical news here
Funny, my iPod (iPod! From the competitor!) works fine.
And I guess thumbdrives aren't storage devices, either
or are you another Sony Shill?
Im not sure you know what a 'shill' is.
The correct link for this story is geohot's blog: http://geohotgotsued.blogspot.com/2011/04/recent-news.html
not some wanker journalist's ad-laden failure to summarize said blog.
I'm actually suprised people are still supporting a Video Game console with a shockingly (almost criminal) failure rate
That's old news, pre-XBox S. Anyway they extended warranty to 3 years to cover the defect on the old xbox.
massive levels of piracy & online cheating
what's this massive level of online cheating?
no freedom to use your own peripherals or storage devices.
my own usb sticks, ipod, FAT32-formatted usb hard drives, etc... work fine, just as they do on my ps3.
I disagree with his statement. Stealing databases with user info is only "not cool" if you do something with them. Having a bunch of 1's and 0's stored in a lock box doesn't hurt anyone.
Sony certainly seems to be suffering from it, and all the people who's info was stolen have likely done the smart thing and cancelled their credit cards.
I for one am glad for this article. I have been following Hotz legal issues here on slashdot... and when I heard the PSN was hacked I did draw a possible connection in some manner in my mind. I found this useful to here a report that Hotz is clearly rejecting an involvement. Thanks.
massive levels of piracy
Honestly, if true (it's almost impossible to accurately determine the amount of 'pirates'), why would the average person even care about this enough to stop supporting the console because of it?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
it isnt abought people stop supporting its gamne companys.
"There's only 50 million PS3s in circulation."
More than that.
Or do you forget that practically every retail store has a model playing games nonstop?
The store itself counts as a customer, too.
Quit relying upon wikipedia, which doesn't take everything into account.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If you know about Geohot's motive to hack the PS3 itself, it really doesn't make sense why he would be involved with this. He wants people to be able to do more with their PS3s, not less.
I am not devoid of humor.
Really? To add another anecdote, I got an email from my mother, who is about as low tech as can be while still being able to use email, that she heard about it and asked if I checked my credit cards. (It's been in mainstream news, "playstation" and "credit cards stolen" does actually get a lot of peoples attentions)