A prominent Playstation 3 hacker is warning that Sony’s latest firmware update (3.60) effectively “re-secures” the console.
Youness Alaoui – aka KaKaRoToKS – is the author of PSFreedom, an open source Jailbreak patch.
Alaoui also created a PL3 payload for USB dongles which successfully infiltrated the PS3’s security system on firmware 3.41 and below.
“For now, it looks to me (at first glance) that the PS3 has been re-secured, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be broken again from scratch,” Alaoui explained on Twitter.
According to Alaoui, the PS3’s pre-3.60 security was based on a “chain of trust” – where various layers of the console were secured by individual levels of encryption, with one granting access to the next.
However, the so-called chain of trust was unceremoniously snapped by the talented GeoHot – who identified the “mtldr” key, a root decryption cypher capable of unlocking all the others.
Enter the post-3.60 world. Sony has halted the use of mtldr, instead choosing to deploy a new digital security system. As such, hacking the PS3 is likely to require the discovery of a completely fresh exploit.
“[Yes], Sony’s epic fail was epic…[But] it doesn’t mean they can’t come [up] with an epic save,” added Alaoui.
(Via EuroGamer)
