PS3 Encryption Keys Leaked
An anonymous reader writes "PS3 security has been compromised again. The holy grail of the PS3 security encryption keys — LV0 keys — have been found and leaked into the wild. For the homebrew community, this means deeper access into the PS3: the possibility of custom (or modified) firmware up to the most recent version, the possibility of bypassing PS3 hypervisor for installing GNU/Linux with full hardware access, dual firmware booting, homebrew advanced recovery (on the molds of Bootmii on Wii), and more. It might lead to more rampant piracy too, because the LV0 keys could facilitate the discovering of the newer games' encryption keys, ones that require newer firmware."
The PS3 is nearing the end of its life and it's taken 6 years to do it so it's served its purpose.
Fundamentally, client-side security doesn't work. You can obscure the hell out of it and bury it deep within the system, but sooner or later, someone's gonna crack it. If they'd just let the damn homebrew people make backups of their games and install their own software, I doubt the mod community would have sprung up like this. They wanted access to the hardware, not pirated games. If they'd just locked up the portion of the system responsible for validating a game disk with some kind of TPM mechanism but left the possibility of running "unsigned" content, I doubt this breakthrough would have happened within the life of the product.
Sony, like every other big corporation, doesn't understand how hackers think. They don't give a fuck about your games: They want to see the nifty hardware! They want to push it to its limits, make new stuff with it. These are creative people who are endlessly fascinated with how things work. They're bored engineers.
But management got the idea in their head that the hardware is also theirs, not the person who bought it, and they're the only ones that get to say what it does, how it does it, etc. In so doing, they pissed off about a half million people who have the time, patience, resources, and will to tear the damn thing apart piece by piece until it's theirs again. Guys, why couldn't you just let them have their fucking Linux on PS3?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie