New PS3 update increases security

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 7 September, 2010

UPDATE: PSJailbreak no longer works.

UPDATE: Digital Foundry's Rich Leadbetter had this to say on the latest PS3 update:

"Yes, people have tried it and the Jailbreak no longer works.

"3.42 is the only way to access PSN, so in Sony's world you have to upgrade. However, for now it looks like people who have the Jailbreak are sticking to 3.41 and using a proxy server bypass to remain online.

"Going forward, the hackers will be attempting to reverse engineer future firmwares and producing custom versions that keep the exploit working."

ORIGINAL STORY: A new update for the PlayStation 3 released this morning may combat the PSJailbreak hack.

Version 3.42 is described as "minor" by director of hardware marketing John Koller, but "includes additional security features".

While Sony is yet to reveal the intention of the update, many speculate it combats the high-profile PS3 crack which exploded onto the internet in August.

Earlier this month an open source alternative to the PSJailbreak hack, called PSGroove, was released.

The open source version of the jailbreak is effectively a clone of the commercial hack, which has yet to make it in volume to the modchip suppliers.

The crack allows PS3 users to copy all the games they own - and any they don't - onto hard disk.

Digital Foundry took on the PSJailbreak in a special versus article published last month.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (52) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • harshahorizon #1 1 year ago

    Here starts the never ending firmware war

  • fknetwork #2 1 year ago

    It's already been cracked.. again....

  • themagicaltaz #3 1 year ago

    Any news on the 3D BD playback ?

  • NotSoSlim #4 1 year ago

    Sony need to hire some of the hackers and use there knowledge to attack this issue

  • PiranhaUK #5 1 year ago

    NotSoSlim: The fact the hack is open sourced means they know already what these hackers know... No advantage in giving them a job!

  • rodpad #6 1 year ago

    PSP Situation all over again. This will never be fully plugged and those that care about homebrew (and/or piracy - lets not start that boring "what people will use the jailbreak for" discussion again) will stay offline.
    Edited by 2 at 07/09/10 @ 08:58

  • riceNpea #7 1 year ago

    i don't like where this is heading. soon our PS3's will become self aware, form Skynet and determine the only way to stop hackers is to obliterate the human race.

  • rodpad #8 1 year ago

    My point wasn't to argue what people use it for, it's been done to death in many existing threads and news articles. It was to try and keep comments on topic in regards to Sony blocking the exploit.

    Unsure what people are negging me for. I haven't denied that people will use it for piracy at all.

    Only trying to be nice!
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/10 @ 09:05

  • Geesh #9 1 year ago

    Yep, take that debate elsewhere HappyHaunt. It's been done a million times and it never ends well.

  • NotSoSlim #10 1 year ago

    Won't be shocked to see another hardware revision within 6 months...piracy doesn't kill console sales. It kills development support but with all 3 consoles now hackable devs still cannot afford not to develop for them.

    You may see more firmware updates on game discs now tho

  • Geesh #11 1 year ago

    Does anyone actually know if you can update PSJailbreak. The DF article on here seems to think you can't, but if you can update the other USB devices with things like PSGroove on them, why not PSJailbreak?

  • midnight_walker #12 1 year ago

    Piracy has killed the portable platforms

    Because the DS is dead in the water?

  • Nighthawk_08 #13 1 year ago

    People who use pirate games are low life pieces of shit. I hope you all die. And your familys.

  • riceNpea #14 1 year ago

    what an idiot Nighthawk is. illiterate too

  • HL706 #15 1 year ago

    On the Piracy v Homebrew debate - I don't think it's a coincidence that the talk of custom firmware's and exploits to jailbreak the console have come a matter of months *after* Sony removed the OtherOS option. I enjoyed programming the Cell and would consider an exploit that gave me the functionailty back tbh..

  • Nighthawk_08 #16 1 year ago

    @riceNpea go fuck yourself you nipple

  • M_of_the_sys #17 1 year ago

    Oh great. Lots of new threads will be appearing claiming that the firmware bricked their PS3.

  • coolbritannia #18 1 year ago

    That was fast. I'm expecting Sony to do more damage with rushed firmware updates than piracy would. Watch this space.

  • riceNpea #19 1 year ago

    @djronz

    so hoping people and their families die is a valid opinion to you? interesting

  • riceNpea #20 1 year ago

    i asked the question, i didn't state you did. anyway that's why i called him an idiot, reasonably i think. unless you think anything he said was valid/entertaining/informative?

  • SilentNinja92 #21 1 year ago

    Thanks a lot you idiot hackers, now the rest of us are going to have to get monthly updates to update security, even though its just you few being too cheap to buy the games.

    Im sure there are a small few who want to do some homebrew. But most of this will just be people wanting free games. Heres hoping that sony finds a way to just stop all future hacks of this kind full stop.

    Is there going to be a ban hammer for hackers? So anyone going online with copied games gets instantly banned. I really hope so...

  • SniperZoz #22 1 year ago

    Couple of interesting points (by no means I am condoning piracy but ...):

    1. X360 has been hacked for ages now ... but still it's the console with the highest games/console ratio.

    2. 2009 was the year which saw the most movie leaks and the highest ever torrent movie downloads - 2009 holds also the best sales record for Hollywood.

    Still - feel free to believe what they tell you about piracy!

  • PiranhaUK #23 1 year ago

    SniperSoz: I don't always believe what I'm told, I just understand the obvious! If someone pirates a game they don't pay for it... Thats called theft in my book!

  • Nighthawk_08 #24 1 year ago

    @riceNpea. I'll tell you what part of what I said is valid. You dicks using piracy are pieces of shit. Cheap bastards. U wanna know why I think this, cause for the past 19 years iv been playing games, and I absolutely fucking love it. Piracy fucks the studios over that makes the games. If studios start going bankrupt because of low life, thieving tramp bastards like you it means less games for me to play and some poor bastard without a job. That's a valid point

  • icematt12 #25 1 year ago

    I knew this as soon as I switched on my console this morning and saw that I had downloaded 3.42. I could go all Snake at this point and go "War has changed" but it's a bit too early for me yet. Maybe after some sugar has kicked in.

  • riceNpea #26 1 year ago

    fair enough. shame that wasn't all you said. i was put out by your wish for the pirates, and more abhorrently their families, to die.

    in my eyes that made you sound immature and frankly idiotic.

    anyway, i apologise to everyone for going off topic so much. i have nothing else to say.

  • des #27 1 year ago

    lol...like that is going to stop anything,just like with PSP...keep dreaming Sony

  • Nighthawk_08 #28 1 year ago

    @riceNpea it was an immature comment. But it meant in jest, I don't wish death on any pirate users family. Just them

  • chasejamie #29 1 year ago

    Smelly pirates. I hate updates that doesn't include any goodies.

  • scorpius45 #30 1 year ago

    The update has made all the text darker on web pages like everything is in bold, I fired up my other PS3 that I haven't updated yet just to make sure I wasn't seeing things and the text looked normal, going to update that one now to see if it changes.

  • Mnia786 #31 1 year ago

    From the looks of it, you can get online with FW 3.41 using the proxy but PSGroove and PSJB have been blocked off. The REAL illegality will now rise - people will start probing their JBroken 3.41 HDD's for GameOS files and try to make CFW from 3.42. Homebrew might be an "excuse" for piracy but reverse engineering certainly is not -.-

  • oreillymj #32 1 year ago

    I don't understand why Sony left the proxy server hole in the IP config. The number of users who absolutely need a proxy server is small. The majority use it to bypass firmware upgrades and has given them a way to log into PSN while running pirated games.

  • oreillymj #33 1 year ago

    BTW - One side-effect of this hack is that Sony will never allow PS3 to read files >4Gb off any external device to block backups.

    I'd expect games from now on to use huge asset files that can't be copied onto FAT devices. And as previously mentioned Sony could also change the digital sig on all the PS3 assets which only newer firware can read so backups of new games cannot run on old pre 3.4.1 firmwares.

    BTW - do any games have on-disk FW updates like the PSP had. I've always updated over PSN, so I've never seen this myself, but does anyone know of a game that ran an enforced FW update before the game itself would run?

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #34 1 year ago

    "Piracy fucks the studios over that makes the games. If studios start going bankrupt because of low life, thieving tramp bastards like you it means less games for me to play and some poor bastard without a job. That's a valid point "

    Well, no, it isn't, because 30 years of videogames-industry history have proved that it's total and utter horseshit. There is more and more piracy every year, and the industry makes more and more money every year.

  • makeamazing #35 1 year ago

    X360 has been hacked for ages now ... but still it's the console with the highest games/console ratio.

    That might be the case, but when the console has been selling bucket loads, why is it that the number of games sold has been lower than both the PS3 and Nintendo.

    I am not saying that is definately the case, but you have to be careful with sweeping statements saying that its had no impact at all.

  • Nighthawk_08 #36 1 year ago

    @Rev. Stuart Campbell

    Do you seriously think that piracy doesn't affect developers?? What fuckin planet are you from you dumb fuck. If just a quarter of the install base started using piracy it would have a major effect. You will try and justify your thieving ways all
    you want but you ain't nothin but a low life thieving bitch. I'd personally love it if somehow anybody using piracy has there system locked.

  • PiranhaUK #37 1 year ago

    "Well, no, it isn't, because 30 years of videogames-industry history have proved that it's total and utter horseshit. There is more and more piracy every year, and the industry makes more and more money every year."

    Tell that to all the games developers that have gone into administration and been shut down over the years. The only thing that's horseshit is your analysis. You only have to look at the decrease in risk taking by publishers to see that your conclusions are false...

  • moz4720 #38 1 year ago

    @oreillymj It's necessary for some beta test enviroments.
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/10 @ 13:22

  • chessboxer #39 1 year ago

    @ oreillymj

    Every retail PS3 game has on disc firmware. This allows offline users to keep their PS3 (reasonably) upto date. Gran Turismo 5 and other PS3 titles which have not yet gone to press will have v3.42 or later on the disc.

  • ChuckNorris #40 1 year ago

    I wonder if it's the same Stuart Campbell, my all time favourite game journalist...

    http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.co...

  • PiranhaUK #41 1 year ago

    @ ChuckNorris:

    Just read that Stuart Campbell article and it really is twisting the facts of piracy. How can he take one statistic from one PC game and draw the conclusion that piracy is negligible. I agree with him that it's hard to calculate the true cost and I also agree that the revenues figures quoted as being lost to piracy are probably much lower. However, I've got a number of friends that have chipped their consoles over the years and who play pirated titles like Halo weeks before official release. I know from speaking to them that if piracy was not possible they WOULD buy these same games as they are massive fans of them. When piracy is made easy enough the temptation is great and clearly from personal experience it has resulted in lost sales to developers...

    Theft is still theft however people try to justify their actions and attempt to downplay it's impact!

  • ChuckNorris #42 1 year ago

    @PiranhaUK

    I'm not arguing that he is right. Personally I've never during my 20 years of gaming ever once cracked a console. The reason for me liking WoS is not based on that article. I was just wondering if Rev. Stuart Campbell on EG is the same man.
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/10 @ 14:07

  • PiranhaUK #43 1 year ago

    @ ChuckNorris

    No worries, I didn't think you were agreeing with him, just responding to your link ;o)

    The odd thing is I used to have no problem with piracy when I was younger. I too would roll out the "well I wouldn't have bought it anyway" line. It's just as Ive gotten older my opinions have changed and I've had to admit I was wrong. A similar argument goes on in the music industry. I've got friends who produce music and who get really irate about their tunes/albums being ripped off by torrent downloaders. These same people are always offering me pirated films! They never seem to get the hypocrisy. People like to think they're not hurting anyone and find it easier to think they as an individual are not hurting the big music/film/games publishers. The truth is they're affecting the people employed by these industries, the producers, sound engineers, camera men, video editors, games artists/programmers and all the other people who make a living working for these big companies. FACT
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/10 @ 14:22

  • Lord_Gremlin #44 1 year ago

    Sony wins. As usual. Always bet on Sony.

    Sorry, I'm still under impression of Duke Nukem announcement.

    Anyway, it's likely will be the permanent end of this particular hack. Will it guarantee that it won't happen again some day? Probably not.

  • gott_sei_dank #45 1 year ago

    I have to give credit where it is due, it was Stuart Campbell who changed my thinking regarding piracy. It is obvious that piracy isn't theft but I'd always fell into the trap of thinking, illegitimate game = loss of a sale. It should also have been clear that there is no way of knowing how many sales are lost because we can never know how many people would have brought the game legitimately in the absence of piracy. My own intuition is that because it is easy and that alot of people have the necessary bandwidth people see it as a trivial thing and as such feel that the actual games have little worth.

    Anyway regarding the PS3 hack if it was exploiting a hardware fault then as others have said the merry go round begins.

  • vizzini #46 1 year ago

    gott_sei_dank I can see how you have come to justify stealing software as a nothing crime; but your argument takes no account of the damage done by piracy that devalues the retail product.

    If people who pirate for themselves, didn't pass comment on the stolen product they played, and didn't boast about their warez past time, then it is possible that no damage is being done, had they never had the money to spend.

    But we all know that people who steal software/films/music regularly boast about their warez lifestyle. Make money on the side and tell everyone they know how shit they thought the latest game was. Even though they gave up after an hour; ironically because they don't need to recoup value from a stolen/pirated game.

    When I was a kid I spent every penny I had on games and copied my friends games, shared my games with them and played most to completion. But like others, that was in the days of cassettes and diskettes, and collectively we all kept developers/publishers going; as no-one in the groups played for free; unlike with today's internet, so now I think very differently about all piracy.

  • PiranhaUK #47 1 year ago

    I'm sorry gott_sei_dank but your argument contradicts itself. If it's impossible to know how many pirates copies would have been legitimate game sales (as you say), its therefore equally wrong to assume they all wouldn't have been. I don't think you have to know that 1 pirate copies = 1 lost sale before you can say it's theft. It's obvious that some sales are lost and therefore piracy itself does some damages the industry. The only thing up for debate is how much damage does it do?

    While it's very convenient to assume it is negligible even as low as 1% according to Stuart Campbell, if you take a game like Modern Warfare 2 then your talking about 150,000 lost sales. That's potentially over 4 million dollars lost to pirates and don't forget that's assuming the best case of 1% lost sales. Now let's assume that it's ever so slightly higher @ only 2.5%. Now were talking about over 10 million dollars lost to piracy. It's starting to look like a lot of lost change behind that sofa as Stuart puts it! Now whatever you think of Activision as a company, that money could have been used to fund a risky indie developers new game idea. That small indie developer may well go under now Activision decides not to fund that sort of project and throw all it's money @ MW3 which has more of a guarantee of a financial return. Even optimistic calculations of the losses to the industry have REAL consequences!
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/10 @ 17:57

  • nemesisND1derboy #48 1 year ago

    To those guys saying that piracy does not affect the industry, what are you on? Just because last year was the biggest year for pirates and the biggest grossing year in the industry does not mean that piracy doesn't affect it.If the elements of years passed had been the same last year, i.e. no price drops on consoles, less uptake of the casual market, the indusrty would be in huge trouble due to piracy. Console price drops and the ever increasing casual market are what caused and industry boom the last couple of years. To say that piracy has no effect is utter nonsensical jargon. Had there not been any piracy, the industry would be even better now, devs outside of Japan would still make great PSP games and would continue to grow and I believe we would have better games for it. We would also have less stringent DRM which would'nt be detrimental to the consumers' experience.

    / Rant over...for now
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/10 @ 17:37

  • Mnia786 #49 1 year ago

    @oreillymj - "BTW - One side-effect of this hack is that Sony will never allow PS3 to read files >4Gb off any external device to block backups.

    I'd expect games from now on to use huge asset files that can't be copied onto FAT devices. And as previously mentioned Sony could also change the digital sig on all the PS3 assets which only newer firware can read so backups of new games cannot run on old pre 3.4.1 firmwares.".

    I agree. I was thinking this when I first found out that only games with a file less than 4GB could be copied and run (FAT limitation) so if Sony enforces a 4GB asset file on all games, it helps them stamp out piracy (unless NTFS or HFS or something is used for backups). Furthermore, 3.42 onwards could have new panic calls built into the game OS to prevent code injections etc. to stop any more software attempts at hacking.

  • MeBrains #50 1 year ago

    piracy has always been and will always be.

    "back in the days" when new releases were on cassette tape and only £9.95 on release, companies made a profit, while most users had shitloads of 5 1/4's - all copied.

    i bought a psp because it was hackable. guess what - I bought a few games for it as well. the knife cuts both ways.

  • orangpelupa #51 1 year ago

    <strong>
    "Nearly everyone with a PS3 is likely to have a PC. There is nothing in terms of homebrew that cannot be done on a PC that you need the PS3 for. Jailbreak is for piracy. Anyone claiming otherwise is using a convenient excuse. "</strong>

    LOL, this person maybe never taste the wonderfull thing called homebrew by him/herself.

    i'll give you one simple example

    SMS - A homebrew Media Player for PLAYSTATION 2.
    what i can do with it?
    - Can watch video / listen music in my bedroom. In simple way, fast, no need to go to 3rd floor to set up PC. (my bedrom on 2nd floor), ans other things :
    -- Stream Videos and musics from Network (work on OGG Vorbis too)
    -- Can watch low-res video in highquality (by using SDTV, because it look ultra-bad on my hi-res LCD PC Monitor)
    -- I can just plug USB Flashdisk and listen music / watch movie from it.
    -- I can use subtitles i downloaded from internet, whatever language i want.
    -- and sooooooooooo much more

    just wait and see yourself if XBMC (or any media player homebrew) ported to PS3. PS3 will become awesome media player.

    and there still many weird app for PS2.
    - IRC Chat client. Just plug usb keyboard, and its works :D
    - Simple text editor
    - Picture viewer (just plug flashdisk, it will do slideshow on PS2)
    - and many other i cant remember.

    and this one last sentence from me:
    <strong> Piracy have been rampant on PS1, PS2, XBOX 360, PC (for ages), NDS. But that not killed PS1, PS2, XBOX 360, PC, NDS.</strong>

    BFBC2/L4D series/Portal, etc, etc selling strong on PC.
    Xbox 360 original games still selling very well.
    i think the PR talk about piracy killing game platform is just overblown out of proportion.

    thanks,
    sorry my bad english
    Edited by 2 at 08/09/10 @ 04:51

  • tossum #52 1 year ago

    I'm late to this thread, and its probably dead, but I'm wondering: Stuart Cambell - are you the same that reviewed Magic Carpet 2 for pc gamer and gave it 30 odd percent? If so did you get the sack for it? I have wondered about that for ages...