PlayStation 3 Console Hacked…Hard

Posts all over the gaming internet are reporting the latest custom firmware hack to hit Sony’s PlayStation 3 console, which is apparently compatible with the recently launched 4.25 firmware. Where this latest console security breach differs from previous ones is that Sony’s level-0, or LV0, decryption keys were also leaked out, meaning that those running hacked consoles can allow the firmware to be decrypted and re-encrypted to keep the hacks going—supposedly doing an end-run around Sony’s attempts to squash the hacked consoles via firmware updates.

According to a post on Joystiq about the hack, the two releases come from separate groups—and with strangely divergent ethical codes, apparently. The group who released the firmware hack, says the post, is called BlueDiskCFW, a Chinese hacking collective that had planned to sell custom firmware updates using the LV0 decryption keys.

To counteract that, another group who takes credit for developing the keys in the first place—who call themselves The Three Musketeers—released the LV0 keys in order to prevent BlueDiskCFW from charging money for them.

Here’s an excerpt of what they said in a statement about the release:

“You can be sure that if it wouldn’t have been for this leak, this key would never have seen the light of day. Only the fear of our work being used by others to make money out of it has forced us to release this now.”

As of now, Sony has yet to make a public comment on the hack. But with roughly a years’ worth of life left in the console (until the new PlayStation console is presumably released), it would certainly be in the company’s best interests to find a way to combat this latest hack. The main question is: can they?

Via Joystiq