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PS3 Encryption Keys Leaked

Posted by Soulskill on from the andrei,-you've-lost-another-submarine? dept.

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."

2 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sony did this to themselves by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    It lasted six years. The PS3 doesn't have much life left as a flagship console. Better security would have been a waste of money.

  2. Re:subject by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would not be at all surprised to find out that the leak came from Sony, and was deliberate.

    Making the PSX/PS1 easy to hack was the smartest thing that Sony ever did, intentionally or not. Chipping the PlayStation was simple for geeks, who got excited about exclusive games like Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy 7, and spread the word to their non-chipping friends.

    The original PlayStation was so overwhelmingly popular that they mortally wounded Sega, and ensured that the N64 was only a modest success.

    That set the stage for the PS2 to be the best-selling console in history, despite the efforts of the (deeply-subsidized) Xbox, which was an excellent console in its own right.

    The PS3 was not hacker-friendly or technologically superior. Worst of all, it was very expensive. The reasonable success that Sony has had with the PS3 is largely due to the momentum from the PS1 and PS2 - the PS4 will have no such advantage.

    In its last years, the PS3 is still unable to compete on price. The basic specs cannot be improved without destroying backwards compatibility. That only left Sony with one option - make the PS3 easy to hack.