Slashdot Mirror
Sony Taking Down PSP Titles In Response To Vita Hackers
Carlos Rodriguez writes "The hacker community has found a way to make the Vita run unsigned code by exploiting weaknesses in PSP games available for download in the PSN store. In response, Sony has made the affected games unavailable for download for all platforms — PSP and Vita both — even if you had already paid for it and hadn't had the chance to download it yet. In the case of 'Everybody's Tennis', the game was removed from the PSN worldwide after the modder community bragged about the game being exploitable but before any exploit was released for it. Is Sony being too overzealous in its fight against piracy?"
For those not familiar with this company, who may ask "But won't they lose money if they take down the games?", let me give you some background. This is a company that would rather pull EVERY game on PSN than to lose even the slightest bit of control over their locked-down system. This is a company that will infect their CD's with viruses to prevent copying, a company that repeatedly kills its own platforms with its insistence on proprietary formats, a company that doesn't care if your old blu-ray player plays the latest blu-rays or not--a company that will remove any feature, cripple any platform, pull any game, destroy any product line--all to maintain control. If Sony were faced tomorrow morning with the choice between risking people copying even one of their movies and bulldozing the entire PSP line into a landfill, they would have that landfill full before the sun went down.
This is what happens when you allow a media producer to mix in the same company with the producer of the hardware that plays said media.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
You mean overzealous? Or Too zealous?
Sony is so stupid it hurts sometimes. It's like they do everything they can to sabotage themselves. How many times can they shoot themselves in the foot and stay in business? I imagine a few more since they've got some cash in the bank, but this just isn't sustainable.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Just overload them with blog posts of people bragging about being exploitable.
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
I have an exploit for all known PSP and PSVita games which makes it possible to run unsigned code. I havent released it yet but I will soon. Your move.
If so.....then they did the right thing and I don't see the problem here.
If, on the other hand, they just never put them back up and don't refund the people who purchased these games.....then there's a problem.
In the case of 'Everybody's Tennis', the game was removed from the PSN worldwide after the modder community bragged about the game being exploitable but before any exploit was released for it.
Oh, well in that case, every game I don't like is exploitable. Your move Sony.
Long signatures suck.
Here come all the OMG SONY SUCKS people.
Guys, they're a company out to make profit, and they're going to put the game back up in time.
ANY company would do the same thing if suddenly they're product they were expecting revenue from was suddenly able to be accessed for free.
I'm not discounting that Sony does a lot of scummy stuff, but is not one of them in my eyes.
I'm going to take such a huge karma hit for this comment, how dare I go against the flow.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
PSN should work fine too.
If you have a computer you have a choice.
Download what you want, or buy what you want. Sony`s stance on piracy just makes the platform as a whole very unattractive.
If you have a open system that runs emulators, runs games without DRM you get 2 things.
Market share and people buying games. More devices in circulation means more potential buyers.
Sony is educating millions on the power of Digital Rights Management (DRM). The more educated, informed and angry people we have the better.
I am sure Sony's licensing agreement says "Sony does not have to provide anything for your money". I would love to see the lawsuits flame up over this. Of course the agreement will also say "contests to the agreement must happen in East Texas(or whichever jurisdiction is most favorable to Sony)" and that that the customer waives the right to class actions lawsuits.
If you are being shafted by Sony on this sorry, see if you can get a class action lawsuit going and buts that "customer (dis)agreement. If you are not being shafted by Sony, lets thank Sony for the education on DRM it is providing to a wide range of the public.
In a "walled garden" environment like Sony's, it's appropriate to not only remove titles with known flaws, but pre-emptively remove titles where you reasonably suspect there is either a flaw or an easy way to discover a flaw. After all, one of the reasons people choose a walled-garden community is for safety at the expense of freedom.
However, Sony and other walled-garden community proprietors/overlords also have other obligations:
* It has an obligation to offer access OR just compensation to anyone who has already paid for the title. If the person never downloaded the title, "just compensation" is a full refund.
* It has an obligation to offer just compensation to anyone who bought a title which is now unusable.
* It has an obligation to quickly review titles it pre-emptively removes and restore them within days, not weeks.
* It has an obligation to work with content creators to help them fix the flaws and screen for exploits of products before they are published.
* It would make for good vendor relations if it pro-actively developed generic exploit-detection tools and regularly screened its libraries, and worked with content creators to quietly update their products BEFORE the black hat community discovered specific exploits.
Non-walled-garden community managers do not have these obligations, but it may still be good for vendor- and public-relations if they also pro-actively scanned for exploits and worked with vendors to fix them, and flagged known-exploitable code so people who download it know what they are getting. One of the freedoms of "living" outside a walled garden is the freedom to run unsafe code. One of the responsibilities of "living" outside a walled garden is to maintain 0wnership of your own equipment.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I can't imagine why Sony would possibly have a corporate culture of paranoia regarding security issues.
Way to go Sony, that ought to teach those pesky customers of yours!
Actually, I think Stallman should thank Sony for reenacting every scary story he is telling when explaining horrors of verdor lock-ins and proprietary format traps. This ought to stick it to those, who kept saying that no company would be suicidal enough to treat their customers this way.
Sometimes I don't know what to do with you, I love your products but I totally hate your company and outlook. If I could unlock a vita I would totally go out and buy one and even buy some of the games that proven their worth just like I did with the DS but you are making me not want to even buy one because of the tactics you are pulling.
Wow! Back in the day (70s-80s) Sony made some cool stuff - I'm talking about Trinitron tvs, open-reel tape machines and awesome stereos. The quality was amazing. A popular "rule-of-thumb" was you can gauge the quality of a CRT-based telly was how heavy it was - Sony was always heaviest!!!! Until some competitors were caught adding lead(?) weights into the tv box!!
Sony is a sad shadow of it's former self.
Well done Sony you are on the road to utter irrelevance.
Just start a low level discussion about how there is a backdoor in Skyrim that lets you root the PS3.
If hackers are saying a game is exploitable Sony would have to be insane to leave the exploit up on their store. Why would they expose themselves to an exploit? So they've taken it down presumably with the intention of fixing whatever the exploit is before putting it back up. Perhaps Everyone's Tennis does something such as peer to peer gameplay or hitting an external url which leaves it vulnerable to an exploit.
I don't know, really. Have we seen a decrease in attacks in the waters off of Somalia?
If those few malcontents would stop with their escape attempts, the prison guards would stop beating all of us!
it's not a matter of IF, but rather of 'how fast'. digital content and hardware in the hands of hackers and your platform or media or whatever WILL be circumvented, period.
game, set, and match.
quit subsidizing hardware with high prices on games... embrace the community instead of pissing them off. you don't want mad hackers out to get you.. you can't have forgotten what's happened previously, can you?
Piracy destroyed the PSP software market. Sony should do everything possible to avoid that with the Vita and every other Sony platform.
It's not like Sony haters on Slashdot or any other pro-piracy site would ever say anything good about Sony. There's no sense in trying to appeal to people who actively seek to harm you. Hostile enemies should be treated like hostile enemies.
Expensive mobile device and overzealous company policy..oh proprietary format too.
The device flopped over Christmas here in the UK & retailers were desperately promoting special offers and discounts as soon as it was released.
Sony & Nintendo have to learn the mobile gaming sector has got a lot more competitive and in most cases competitor's games are cheaper too.
I'm afraid this business model is done.
I thought "Honeybadger" was stoopid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg
Some of us buy game consoles just to play games. If we want a computer, we'll go use one. To me a game console is like a toaster. Would I try to put homebrew on my toaster? No. I don't care how many microchips it has in it.
The average consumer doesn't give a fuck about all these things, they just to play the games that (sadly) only sony's hardware offers.
Until sony loses every exclusive game worth a shit, people will continue to buy their products.
You want people to stop buying sony? Instead of going on a religious quest to tell all the people to repent, go to developers and ask them to either not produce games for sony or produce for multiple platforms.
I'm not a fan of their hardware, either. In 2000, I bought a Sony home theater system, thinking I was getting good quality with the "good" brand. Within a few months, the DVD changer got jammed and I couldn't watch any DVDs on it. It was under warranty so I sent it in to be repaired. They kept it for almost two months. I was absolutely livid. When they finally sent it back, it had a nasty scratch down the left side, and the icing on the cake was that it STILL didn't work! So I unplugged the thing, stuck it right back in the box that I had just gotten it out of, and sent it back. I waited a few more weeks, finally got it back, and this time it worked, though I was still pissed off at the scratch.
Within a month after the anniversary date of my purchase, all of a sudden, the center channel speaker started making this hideous noise. It wasn't the speaker, it was the port on the system the speaker was plugged into. If I swapped it out with a different speaker, the different speaker made the noise. I couldn't hear crap, so I called them back up. They said they'd be happy to repair it--for a few hundred bucks. I explained that although more than a calendar year had passed since I bought the thing, it had been in their repair facilities for over two of those twelve months, and I felt that they should give me credit for that time and repair the thing for free. They refused to budge.
So I unplugged the damn thing, hauled it to an electronics recycling center, and swore never to knowingly buy another piece of Sony hardware again. I had such a bitter taste in my mouth from the experience that I didn't even buy a replacement component; to this day, I just use the speakers on my television. Wow, things sure have changed since the days I wrote a script to hit Amazon's site and page me when a PS2 was available so that I could get one on launch day. After all of the other crap that's gone down, the root kit, the other OS option, the PSN hackage, the filesharing lawsuits, stories like this hitting WAY too often... I used to be a Sony fan, but for ten years now, and for the foreseeable future, I wouldn't use their stuff even if someone gave it to me for free. Which is a shame for Sony, since in the past ten years I've finally gotten enough disposable income to afford fancy electronics. And as the techno-geek in my family and circle of friends, I've also advised many consumers with money in hand to avoid their stuff.
The solution here is for the hacker community to announce that they found a common flaw that affects a large percentage of sony games, then list about 62% of the catalog. A few titles can be dropped and they can take the fallout. Take down that many titles and the platform will be in trouble.
Coffee: The lifeblood of intelligence in civilization.
His point is that your anger is misplaced. Okay, you would not hack the toaster. Fine, but that isn't the question; the question is whether it should be forbidden to hack the toaster once you have paid for it. People who think it should be fine hack their own toasters. People who think it should not be fine lock down your toaster. It seems obvious to me that only one of those groups affected you, yet you are angry at the other.
i mean really now.. google Everybody's Tennis PSP torrent.... now that it is up in the cloud anyone can get it with out paying for it off their store anyways. Not paying + home brew apps and games = happy user. if you have Paid for the expensive unit already.. I will not get a Vita yet.. as their memory card that only works on that unit is the 2nd worst idea had since Sony came out with Beta Max.
Some of us buy game consoles just to play games. If we want a computer, we'll go use one.
So what do I buy if I want one device that can act as both a handheld computer and a handheld game console?
Is Sony being too overzealous in its fight against piracy?
If it means that customers who paid for games but are not going to receive them nor receive a refund, then yes, they are being too overzealous. But that isn't the word I would use here. I find that FRAUD is a better fit.
Harm everyone because you're paranoid of pirates. Same thing with DRM. Very nice collective punishment.
True, but as of 2012, Nintendo still hasn't eased up to the point of even Apple iOS. Bob's Game anyone?
No, but we have seen a sharp increase in temperatures in the midwestern United States this March.
While most every other camera maker utilizes the industry-standard SD card, Sony continues with proprietary items such as Memory Stick, Memory Pro Duo, Universal Media Disk etc. Remember MiniDisc? The list goes on and on.
Therefore it should be no great surprise when someone finds how to break out of Sony's walled garden that they will clamp down. Hard.
True, they're two big offenders, but in my opinion not the two biggest. How is Apple a bigger offender than Nintendo?
Just for the record I did boycott Sony for quite a few years myself and they have done some downright despicable things like the rootkit and the otherOS removal but I think their improving and so far this year I've bought an eink reader and a Vita from them both purchases I'm pleased with.
http://openpandora.org
As much as possible. Mainly when it comes to the Internet and software. The ONLY Sony products I will consider buying is something like a blue-ray player or home theater sound system. Possible even a TV but there are better TVs out there made by other companies for less $$. Stay away from the music, movies & game systems/software IMO.
I kinda feel bad for Sony. They provide a platform for people quickly playing videogames, but there's a huge body of people who will automatically try to hack it and put homebrew and (let's face it) pirated games on it. It's two large opposing forces.
I know and understand freedom to do what you want with an electronic device, and certainly if you bought a game and can't access it that's a breach of contract, but I just remember how the DS became when it was hacked to high heaven. It got to the stage where you could walk down a lane of carnival stalls and find sellers selling R4 cartiges, or even 50-in-1 games. There was even that article in some Japanese article a while back where they took a simple from a set of commuters in a train and found a lot of them were using pirate carts.
Like or hate Sony, they're clearly doing all they can to prevent the same thing happening to the Vita. In my view, it's a losing battle which, despite the potential for homebrew and hobbyist development for a cool platform, I see as a bit tragic.
If Piracy destroyed the PSP why did the Nintendo DS survive?
Piracy in the Nintendo is as easy as getting a special card available online for as low as 20$ and puting ROM's inside it, PSP piracy involves a special battery, etc.
You might say that competition killed the PSP software market, competition from iPhones, Android devices and Nintendo DS, but dont go about piracy please.
http://openpandora.org
I've been following this for years, and there is still a huge backlog of orders for this. How do you expect to convince video game developers to target Pandora if there are still fewer than 3,000 units shipped?
To put it in perspective: Wii Sports outsell CoD: Black Ops 6 to 1
Wii Sports was also the pack-in for the first several years of the console's availability. I've read comments on Slashdot telling stories of people who buy a Wii with Wii Sports, play around with Wii Sports for a couple weeks, and then put the Wii in a cardboard box without buying other games for it, especially not third-party games.
You can have an Android phone or a Foo phone. Apple isn't the only game in town.
Until very recently, Apple's iPod touch was the only game in town for those who didn't want to have to pay $70 per month for cellular voice and data service. It took three years after the iPod touch gained an App Store before Samsung finally introduced the Galaxy Player in October 2011. And if you want a device that can play games in genres that work best with physical buttons, Sony and Nintendo are still the only games in town, and their developer criteria are even more selective than Apple's.
They don't forbid you to jailbreak your device
But come the next DMCA rulemaking, when the exemption for jailbreaking is set to expire, the law in Apple's and Slashdot's home country will.
A rootkit *is* a virus if you didn't install it yourself, on purpose, you dolt!
I'm a hacker and I've found that every single game on PSN has a vulnerability, I'll release an exploit soon...
Didn't buy it, not going to. I'm done with Sony products, there's absolutely nothing they're making now that I have any interest in purchasing.
Their anti-consumer policies only make it easier for me!
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
...before Sony removes the PSP compatability from the Vita?
That's what Sony are good at, after all.
Sony removed the game just because someone bragged that there was an exploit? Without proof?
So what happens if their competitors, or people who just don't like them, start saying all their Sony games have exploits? Are they going to pull them all?
And what will game creators think about putting their games on that platform if they can be yanked that way.
Will customers buy from such a company - once the word gets out.
This could turn into something interesting.
Hackers hack their consoles for some reason and now Sony removes things from the PSN to protect their bottom line. I blame the hackers. If I were Sony, I would've done the same thing.
I dunno, maybe the fact that the last time they got hacked and raked over the coals has something to do with it. Personally, if I was the CEO when the hack had occurred, I'd be a bit overzealous too. Refund some teenager money, and pull them on even a hint at a problem that results in breaking security.
I8-D
The iPod Touch was the only game in town for what, exactly? A wifi, touchscreen, internet browsing, easy to install apps, no monthly contract required handheld?
Samsung wasn't the first company to market a non-phone Android device. Just one example is the Archos 5, an Android handheld from 2009. Granted, it couldn't load paid apps from the market until the next year, but that still predates your example.
Or if you expand your horizons a little, how about the Nokia N770 from 2005, which included a wide variety of software repositories for finding apps?
For that matter, you could even look back to the NEC MobilePro 700 that I used to have. It came out in 1998, and although it only had a dialup modem, you could get wifi with a PCMCIA card. Nobody had "app markets" back then, but there were plenty of shareware sites set up for WinCE.
This is a question of security of the system if hackers are able to gain access to the internal keys then they can potentially sign content as trusted and therefore delivery any software etc that they like on to an unsuspecting public. Love them or hate them they have done the right thing.
Apple, Sony, and Misro$oft, in no particular order.
Sony once made great stuff, and still does today, excluding anything that has any form of software. Their hardware is and was amazing, top notch stuff... but anything of theirs with any form of software, even just some little embedded thing, I won't touch with a 10 foot pole. That stuff is also mostly, from what I've seen, amazing awesome hardware... it must drive their engineers up the wall that they keep putting garbage software, etc., on things and selling them to unsuspecting customers, crippled with trashware.
A wifi, touchscreen, internet browsing, easy to install apps, no monthly contract required handheld?
Close. I was referring to an easy to install apps, no monthly contract required handheld that's marketed to the general public in the United States. Otherwise, one might include GP2X Wiz, Dingoo, and Caanoo, which almost nobody in the United States has ever heard of.
Just one example is the Archos 5, an Android handheld from 2009.
I'm aware of Archos 5, and I own an Archos 43, but as I understand it, things like ArcTools were always in danger of a possible Google cease-and-desist the way Google cease-and-desisted Cyanogen when he used to provide the Gapps along with CyanogenMod. Nor have I ever seen an Archos 43 in Best Buy, Walmart, RadioShack, or any other major electronics chain; I had to mail order mine, and mail order has its own set of problems.
Or if you expand your horizons a little, how about the Nokia N770 from 2005
Was this sold in stores in the United States? About two years ago, I walked into a Best Buy store, a T-Mobile store, and a RadioShack store in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In each, I asked to try a different Nokia product (the N900 phone), and in each, I was disappointed.
[Something else] came out in 1998
And how many of those were still in use, as opposed to having been discarded, by the time the iPod touch was available?
1) Microsoft does not manufacture any WP7 hardware and 2) WP7 devices are phones, not handheld consoles.
Then please allow me to reiterate: Which handheld console has a counterpart to Xbox Live Indie Games? Sony's does not, I'm told.
Apples and oranges.
Are both fruits.
Oh and that recurring charge is something that a person would pay if they wanted mobile phone service anyways.
Which device combining a handheld console and a mobile phone supports a $7 per month occasional-use voice plan like the plan I currently have with Virgin Mobile USA?
it is possible to use a smartphone without service
Why does a smartphone without service tend to cost $500, which is as much as two $250 PSVita systems?
or with a pay-as-you-go plan
Virgin Mobile USA will not activate a payLo (pay-as-you-go voice) plan on a smartphone. It will activate only a Beyond Talk plan, the cheapest of which costs five times what I currently pay for payLo service, on a smartphone. Which U.S. carrier is best for people who want to use only Wi-Fi and occasional cellular voice with a smartphone?
For example their controllers use simple and sometimes open protocols (I2C) without encryption.
Likewise, the NES and Super NES controllers use something that's almost SPI, as does the Game Boy's Game Link cable. But still, what should Robert Pelloni have done differently when pitching Bob's Game?
At this point I understand why Sony responded the way they did. They're sick of people exploiting their weaknesses and making them look like fools. But it really comes down to the fact that they just need to work on their security. It's gotten painfully embarrassing... They get their network hacked on a regular basis and the whole world is laughing at them. I'm surprised they still exist as a company. I know that I don't trust their security at all at this point and don't have any intention of ever using any of their software.
Then please allow me to reiterate: Which handheld console has a counterpart to Xbox Live Indie Games? Sony's does not, I'm told.
Irrelevant. That was never the question and you're just trying to move goalposts now.
Which device combining a handheld console and a mobile phone supports a $7 per month occasional-use voice plan like the plan I currently have with Virgin Mobile USA?
Any unlocked GSM phone. I pay approximately $8/month and sometimes as little as $5/month using my Android phone on a pay-as-you-go plan.
Why does a smartphone without service tend to cost $500, which is as much as two $250 PSVita systems?
Not all do. You can buy an unlocked smartphone from anywhere between $100 to $500 depending on features and how long it has been on the market. You can buy a MetroPCS smartphone for a little as $20.
Virgin Mobile USA will not activate a payLo (pay-as-you-go voice) plan on a smartphone. It will activate only a Beyond Talk plan, the cheapest of which costs five times what I currently pay for payLo service, on a smartphone. Which U.S. carrier is best for people who want to use only Wi-Fi and occasional cellular voice with a smartphone?
And? Virgin Mobile is not representative of all mobile providers. AT&T, T-Mobile and Boost Mobile have no problems with pay-as-you-go plans for smartphones. Just because your provider limits you doesn't mean they all do.
Please read my other comment about Pandora.
Sony Taking Down PSP Titles In Response To Vita Hackers
Then please allow me to reiterate: Which handheld console has a counterpart to Xbox Live Indie Games? Sony's does not, I'm told.
Irrelevant. That was never the question
Yes it was, and please allow me to explain how: If Sony had an official developer program open to the public, there wouldn't have been so much incentive to defeat the security on the PSP and PS Vita. But this article, along with the killing of Other OS on the PlayStation 3 console, shows that Sony has no plan to offer such a program in the foreseeable future for any of its handheld platforms apart from its Xperia Play phone. Therefore, I asked what handheld does offer such a program.
and you're just trying to move goalposts now.
Anonymous Coward wrote in a comment to an article about the PSP and PS Vita: "It's called Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox Live Indie Games." The Xbox 360 console is not a handheld and therefore not a close substitute for PSP and PS Vita. So the goalposts were at handhelds since Unknown Lamer posted the article.
As for your recommendation of AT&T and T-Mobile, I will have to talk to AT&T and T-Mobile sales associates to confirm this. I was assuming that Boost was offering similar pricing to Virgin, seeing as they share a corporate parent.
Neither of us mentioned anything about homebrew/hacking specifically for a handheld console.
I recognize that I was the first to mention handhelds specifically. When does "proceeding to a different, related question" become "moving the goalposts" so that I can avoid "moving the goalposts" in the future?
att.com and t-mobile.com are right there, right now for you to look at.
As a matter of fact, I did check att.com before I posted, but I've read stories of people getting slammed to a more expensive plan due to having missed a tiny detail buried in a dozen pages of fine print shown to them once they actually sign up for service.