[GregoryRasputin]

Well everyone and their grandmother knows what PS Jailbreak, is by now, what we dont know is how it came about, the case is usually someone inside such firms leak valuable information, SKFU wrote his thoughts on the subject on his blog, here is what he said:

While hackers usually had to work very hard to succeed in the videogame scene, now all seems to become a business of corruption and audacity. A short timeline of the PSJailbreak. How it may have started, succeeded and may go on. PAST Part 1: Someone (called "the fake hacker" below) came in contact with an employee of a SONY service center. The fake hacker probably used a bit social engeneering until the employee agreed to sell him one of the SONY confidential JIG Sticks used in the service centers to test and repair broken PS3 SKU's. Part 2: The fake hacker used documentation and software which was leaked by other SONY employees to study the JIG stick. The stick is used to boot a special firmware from itself before the original PS3 firmware starts. The now running system allows to execute debug/fake signed executables which can be created with SONY's official SDK. Part 3: The fake hacker shared the information with his team members and people who were able to clone the stick. Probably in china as usual. Part 4: The stick is clonable, so the fake hacker went on and used stolen/leaked software from SONY's official SDK to develope (the only real work he did!) the application known as "backup manager" which is used on the PS3 to dump and start the backups. PRESENCE Part 5: The fake hacker distributes high illegal clones of the original JIG stick via several online shops including the "backup manager" which is also illegal as it's all created with stolen/leaked software and documentation by SONY. FUTURE Part 6: SONY may update the PS3's bootcode to prevent loading the stick. They also could log the "backup manager"'s game ID (LAUN-12345) when people go online. So they could identify who actually uses the illegal JIG clone and ban the affected consoles. This would be an illegal step aswell, but hey; it's SONY.

Source

[davidbb]

The "fake hacker" used ingenious techniques to manipulate sony and steal from them, hmmm.... so what industrial espionage happens all the time and i'm sure sony have been guilty of it in the past. What ps jailbreak does is open up another choice of use for the console.

Let's not pretend their is honour amongst "hackers" they know full well that hacking a console will ultimately lead to piracy regardless.

[Mikkuru]

I don't care about the means, only about the results.

I don't care if the person who got the jigstick wasn't a real hacker of up to SKFU's "standards" as a "hacker". Nevertheless, he is the only person or they are to get something actually done, something where all of the "real" "hackers" have failed.

[Mattr92]

Well I give him props for his mad social engineer skills and his programing. So what if he didn't hack anything its the end result of what he did. What we all wanted to run unsigned code a hacker or not we can now do that. The next step is custom firmware and homebrew.

[gliitch]

*Dances in a robot fashion* XD But yeah with out those means we wouldnt have go to where we are :D Either way, we have access to homebrew now, and thats all weve ever wanted :D

[jackieboy8]

A real Hacker or Not he is a dam smart guy!! Maybe he didn't hacked anything he's the only one whit results. A real hacker didn't do this.And he's making lots of money now because it cost 130 euro's. And if he stole something from sony who cares sony steels from us too whit the asking of that mutch money.

[konangrit]

Wow, so bitter.

All they care about is making money, not how great people consider their "fake" hacking skills, or how illegal such activities are in the West. It's business, get over it.

They probably got the jig direct from one of the PS3 manufacturing plants in China where we've seen numerous leaks in the past, such as PS3 Slim etc. So more than likely a Foxconn employee than a Sony employee.

[spec8320]

Hope SKFU will release their own Custom Firmware ...

[japsander]

sony are the biggest thieves
we either let them steal otheros from us or we let them steal psn from us.
either way they stole an already paid for feature from every single ps3 owner worldwide.
what goes around comes around, and now sony must know how we all felt about that.

[robotlove]

Sad truth?

I don't see what's sad about this, or why the author's alarm bells are going off. Whether the documentation was coerced out of them or the hardware was reverse engineered from scratch makes little difference as to the legality of the issue.

The fact is, it's been hacked.