As we posted here earlier, Sony are taking GeoHot to court over his part in hacking the PS3, we didn’t really know GeoHots side of things, well here is a video thanks to ffffurage on IRC, of GeoHot speaking live to G4 tonight:

It was only yesterday that we reported here, that Sony was taking GeoHot and the members of fail0verflow to court, whilst it seemed some of us thought the filings were questionable, these news court papers from PSX Scene, shows in fact this is a legit case, a lot of it seems to be similar to the files that were used in the Sony Vs PS Jailbreak Case, with screen shots of various forums and websites, the most informative article being #4 PDF, which you will find in the court pack below, this file has mentioned other prominent names from the PS3 Scene.

SOURCE PSX Scene
Download

I wish GeoHot, fail0verflow and any other people being persecuted by Sony, all the best of luck, during these court proceedings.

The news over the Sony lawsuit is picking up heat over the internet the last several hours, and has gotten Professor Dave Touretzky, a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University to challenge Sony’s lawsuit and in response has mirrored Geohot’s and fail0verflow’s site ON the university’s servers. The professor is well known for his previous challenges against big corporations (Scientology and DeCSS case). It will be very interesting to see Sony’s reaction to this and how they will proceed.

To quote:

Mirror of GeoHot’s PS3 Jailbreak

January 11, 2011:

Our friends at Sony are having another bad day: i.e., doing something breathtakingly stupid, presumably because they don’t know any better. This time they’re suing George Hotz for publishing PS3 jailbreak information, as reported by EnGadget, Attack of the Fan Boy, and inevitably, Slashdot. Hotz’s jailbreak allows PS3 owners to run the software of their choice on a machine they have legally purchased. His site is geohot.com.

Free speech (and free computing) rights exist only for those determined to exercise them. Trying to suppress those rights in the Internet age is like spitting in the wind.

We will help our friends at Sony understand this by mirroring the geohot jailbreak files at Carnegie Mellon.

GeoHot Mirror

Click here for usage instructions.

Note to Sony lawyers: no doubt you’re eager to rack up another billable hour by sending legal threats to me and my university. Before you go down that unhappy road, check out what happened the last time a large corporation tried to stop the mirroring of technical information here: The Gallery of CSS Descramblers. Have you learned anything in ten years

David S. Touretzky

Research Professor of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

What do you guys think of this? Does Sony Lawsuit have a valid fighting ground in court? Could this lawsuit be a total fake? Let us know VIA reply below.

[VIA PSX-Scene and Professors Site]

While most people are eagerly waiting for a backup manager to accompany the Geohot CFW, it seems that Riku.kh3 has managed to boot PS3 game backup (Castlevania: Lords of Shadow) WITHOUT the need of a BM. What he did was essentially trick the PS3 into thinking that the game backup is actually a PSN game (by patching EBOOT.BIN).

So how do you patch your own EBOOT? Well Riku.kh3 has posted a small guide below, it by no means is newb friendly and requires you to know what you are doing, to quote:

1) Download and compile latest tools from git.fail0verflow.com Git (old versions of unself produce incorrect ELF)
2) Extract ELF from SELF
3) Hexedit ELF, find and replace dev_bdvd to correct path on dev_hdd0 (not all, but most games require this step)
4) Build NPDRM SELF using Geohot’s tools
5) Build package using psn_package_npdrm
6) Patch your builded package using Geohot’s tool (only for 3.55 firmware)

That’s it. If you can’t follow this guide, more detailed guide won’t help you.

//RikuKH3

And here is the modified EBOOT for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow:

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (BLES01047) signed&packed EBOOT (33.5MB)

Multiupload.com – upload your files to multiple file hosting sites!

1) Install PKG file.
2) Transfer contents of USRDIR folder, EXCEPT EBOOT.BIN, to /devhdd0/game/BLES01047/USRDIR/

Thats all! Tested! The game will work from XMB on retail nonJB 3.41, 3.55 and future versions.

Let us know your results with other games.

[VIA PSX-SCENE] – Thanks to StevieD and SaveU for the news tip!

His CFW was released yesterday, and today Geohot has released his homebrew signing tools.

To quote:

homebrew signing tools
don’t mirror
linux and windows
make_self_npdrm makes valid NPDRM selfs from elfs
it does not contain any info on decrypting or removing NPDRM
NPDRM is required for interoperability of our homebrew applications
package_finalize turns your debug packages into psuedoretail packages
psuedoretail packages install on a geohot jailbroken PS3

i’m excited to see what you will create
open source SDK @ PSL1GHT

Download homebrew signing tools: http://geohot.com/ps3publictools_release.zip

[VIA Geohot Blog] – Thanks Horrorwood for news tip!

Let the homebrew development begin!

Well it’s done renowned iPhone hacker takes the Ps3 a level higher by jailbreaking the system and allowing .pkg files to run on firmware 3.55 yes that’s right homebrew on 3.55 is just around the corner. What Famous Geohot has done is that he has enabled the .pkg feature with a lv2diag.self after he has then signed the (NPRDM) self file and packaged it into a retail.pkg file without a signature. A file is then patched again on the flash so that it ignores the signature. What this does is that it allows homebrew to run from the XMB without the signature.

The video below demonstrates homebrew being ran on PS3 firmware 3.55:

GEOHOT WEBSITE: www.geohot.com

An article by BBC news was published today posting news of the latest craze of the release of the PS3 keys and “downfall of the PS3 security”. The reported interviews Geohot as well, to quote:

iPhone hacker publishes secret Sony PlayStation 3 key
By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News

The PlayStation 3′s security has been broken by hackers, potentially allowing anyone to run any software – including pirated games – on the console

A collective of hackers recently showed off a method that could force the system to reveal secret keys used to load software on to the machine.

A US hacker, who gained notoriety for unlocking Apple’s iPhone, has now used a similar method to extract the PS3′s master key and publish it online.

Sony declined to comment on the hack.

“The complete console is compromised – there is no recovery from this,” said pytey, a member of the fail0verflow group of hackers, who revealed the initial exploit at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin in December.

“This is as bad as it gets – someone is getting into serious trouble at Sony right now.”

The group, which has previously hacked Nintendo’s Wii and says it is vehemently against games piracy, said that it had developed the hack so that it could install other operating systems and community – written software – known as homebrew – on the powerful machine.

“The details we provided and information and techniques we disclosed would have been enough to install Linux,” he said. “We have no interest in piracy.”

Following the presentation, US hacker George Hotz, who has previously hacked parts of the console, used a similar technique to extract the master key. He has now published it on his blog.

This formerly secret number is used to “sign” all games and software that run on the system, to authenticate that it is genuine and approved by Sony.

However, once the key is known it can be used to sign any software – including unofficial software and games.

“I hate that it enables piracy,” said Mr Hotz. “The publication of the key is more academic than anything else.”

The number also works for Sony’s handheld console the PlayStation Portable, said Mr Hotz.

Developers have already started releasing tools to develop new software for the PS3 using the hacks.

‘Valid target’

The PS3 – once regarded as the most secure of the game’s consoles, and the only one not to have been permanently cracked – has in the last 12 months come under increasingly scrutiny from hackers.

In January 2010, Mr Hotz claimed to have cracked the console.

Following his initial announcement, Sony released an update disabling a function, called OtherOS, that allowed gamers to install a version of Linux on their machines, thought to have been exploited by Mr Hotz.

Many saw it as a pre-emptive strike to guard against games piracy.

Mr Hotz never released the exploit and publicly said that he had stopped work on the console.

But Sony’s removal of OtherOS prompted other hackers to begin to look at the system more closely.

“It became a valid target,” pytey told BBC News. “That was the motivation for us to hack it.”

He said the team had spent “months” trying to find their way into the system.

“It was not trivial to do this,” he said.

In the end, the flaw that allowed them to crack the system was a basic cryptographic error that allowed them to compute the private key, held by Sony, he said.

“Sony uses a private key, usually stored in a vault at the company’s HQ, to mark firmware as valid and unmodified, and the PS3 only needs a public key to verify that the signature came from Sony.

“Applied correctly, it would take billions of years to derive the private key from the public key, or to make a signature without knowing the private key, even when you have all the computational power in the world at your disposal.”

But the team found that Sony had made a “critical mistake” in how it implemented the security.

“The signing recipe requires that a random number be used as part of the calculation, with the caveat that that number must be truly random and not predictable in any way,” the team said.

“However, Sony wrote their own signing software, which used a constant number for each signature.”

This allowed the team to use “simple algebra” to uncover Sony’s secret key, without access to it.

“This is supposed to be the most secret of secret of secrets – it’s the Crown jewels,” said pytey.

The team decided to publish its method but not the keys.

After the team revealed their hack, Mr Hotz said that he was prompted to renew his work on the system.

“What fun is a race if no-one else is running,” he said. “fail0verflow did great work – they took it up a level.”

Using a similar technique he was able to extract the entire master key for the system, which he subsequently publish online along with a demonstration of it in action.

However, he has not released the method he used to extract the key.

“There is no reason to,” he said.

However, he said that he may release a piece of software that will allow people to easily sign their own pieces of software and homemade games – known as homebrew – on to the console.

“I have a program running but am thinking of a good way to release it,” he said.

Like fail0verflow, he said that he does not condone games piracy.

“I do not want it to be able to sign official Sony programs. I’d like it just to be able to sign homebrew.”

fail0verflow said it “disagrees” with Mr Hotz’s decision to release the key, saying that it expects them “to make piracy easier without accomplishing intrinsically useful”.

Legal worry

Sony takes a dim view of people hacking its system.

Last year, a team released a USB dongle called PSjailbreak that contained software that allowed gamers to play homemade and pirated games on the PlayStation 3.

Sony updated its consoles to block the software and took legal action against distributors in many countries.

However, according to pytey, it may not be so easy to fix the problem this time.

“The only way to fix this is to issue new hardware,” he said. “Sony will have to accept this.”

He said that he thought his group was on safe legal ground with its work.

“I haven’t stolen anything,” he said. “It’s my own hardware, I can run whatever I like on it.

But Mr Hotz was more cautious.

“I’m scared of being hit with a lawsuit,” he admitted.

What is your opinion on this news story? Reply back and let us know.

[Original BBC article VIA PSX-Scene]

Geohot has released the first signed PS3 homebrew, to quote:

It basically is a SELF that shows a “Hello World” and serves as a proof of concept on signing of PS3 FW 3.55! You can grab the download below via source.

http://geohot.com/

Geohot has now released the all mighty root key that allows you to decrypt and sign ANYTHING on the ps3. (more…)

I already posted something about this in the Epic Fail thread but now it is official:

Source PSX Scene
Source PSGroove
Download
Download Win32 Version

Mathieulh has stated on his Twitter that the guys behind PS Jailbreak used GeoHots exploit and strongly advices us to not update to PS3 Firmware 3.42, as this will probably block the PS Jailbreak Dongle, here are Mathieulh’s tweets.

The psjailbreak guys definitely used Geohot’s exploit, without him it wouldn’t have been possible in the first place.

This is a very clever hack which allows code to run a high privileges on the system. Updating would be a real shame.

You should know by the way that this CAN (and most likely will) be updated/fixed by Sony. Avoid updating to 3.42+ at ALL COSTS.

For those of you interested in following Mathieulh on Twitter, go here

Image courtesy of Playstation Lifestyle

EDIT(13th January 2012)
I know its extremely late to post this, but better late than never.
But the fact remains, actual fact that is and not guessing, the PS Jailbreak creators DID NOT use GeoHots exploit, there method was totally different.

As i reported a few times on the forum, several PS3 owners are suing Sony for the removal of the Other OS, an undisclosed, source of Maxconsole has reported to them, that all the Other OS lawsuits, will be combined into one huge lawsuit, here is what Maxconsole said:

Here’s the information a source received from a legal offering (who has given to us and wishes to remain anonymous):

In essence, the claims in these cases are that Sony Computer Entertainment of America (“Sony”) falsely represented that PS3 purchasers would be able to use their PS3s as a computer by installing another operating system, such as Linux. In a recent firmware update, Sony removed the ability of consumers to utilize this feature. As a result, seven class actions were filed against Sony in federal court in San Francisco, California.

We are pleased to announce that, at the request of all counsel, United States District Judge Richard Seeborg has consolidated all of the pending class actions against Sony relating to “Other OS” litigation into one action. As part of that consolidation, the attorneys in the consolidated actions agreed upon an organizational structure to prosecute this action against Sony as a united front. At the request of all of the attorneys, Judge Seeborg ordered that three law firms with offices in San Francisco where the litigation is pending will serve as co-lead counsel (Calvo & Clark, LLP; Finkelstein Thompson, LLP; and
Hausfeld, LLP). We are also pleased to announce that Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz P.C. has been appointed by the various plaintiffs’ law firms as the firm responsible for acting as a liaison with you and other potential class members. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any inquiries you may have concerning the litigation, and we will periodically update you as developments warrant.

The next step in the litigation is to file a Consolidated Class Action Complaint, which we anticipate filing by the end of the month. Sony will then respond to the Complaint, and we will return to the Court in September to discuss the next steps of the litigation.

Source

Here is a list of links, for information regarding the names of Judges and Lawyers mentioned above.
Judge Richard Seeborg
Calvo & Clark
Finkelstein Thompson
Hausfeld
Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz P.C.

Well this may be disappointing news for many who were looking to Geohot to hack the PS3. Over the last few hours Geohot has announced his retirement from hacking. He posted on his Twitter “it was a cool ride, and i’ve learned a lot about a lot. perhaps one of these days i’ll do a more formal goodbye.” You will find now that his PS3, iPhone blog and Twitter page or no longer accessible.

I guess we can thank him for the removal of Linux and then letting us hang out there to dry.

Update:

Another Tweet before blog shutdown:
Sorry, this post was probably a bad idea. Next time I won’t say anything. I miss when this blog was actually about technical things(I’ve been reacting too much to the feedback, which led it to the place it’s in now). I didn’t fully realize most of the current scene don’t care unless they are getting something. Now I do. It’s late tonight, I’ll think about what to do about this in the morning.

The real reason behind no release isn’t technical. It’s just that it will never stop, after blackra1n, people demand unlock, after blacksn0w, people demand untethered. I miss the days when jailbreaking and unlocking were difficult, it attracted a much higher caliber crowd.
Also, to the haters, the picture is quite obviously fake

Haxnetwork member xenno aka malow82 on Youtube, posted the PS3 segment of GeoHot’s speech at the Nuit Du Hack Conference, on IRC a few nights ago, i have been busy so never got round to posting, anyhow, here are the video’s.

Our very own Senior Member SlyRipper, has just recently posted a thread, in which it shows a screenshot of the twitter page of renowned PSP genius Mathieulh describing how GeoHot made his CFW, not a lot is revealed or explained, just enough for you to catch a grasp of what is happening, in one of the tweets, Mathieulh explains how the CFW method created by GeoHot can be easily patched.
So the question is, has GeoHot disappeared because he realises that his CFW is of no use, or is he working on refining it so that it cant be patched.

Continue the discussion here

The folks over at Maxconsole have interviewed Mathieulh(well known/respected PSP hacker), about the Playstation 3, the scene and where things are going right now.

To quote:

So without further delay, here is the interview between Threedog of MaxConsole and Mathiuelh:

1: Members have seen you interacting with Geohot, Do you have any personal interest in the PS3 and if so can you tell us anything about your plans? Are you working with Geohot?

I’ve interacted with a lot of individuals in the past; Geohot is one of them, though one of the most interesting I encountered so far. Although he tends to work alone, we have been exchanging ideas, I helped him with a couple of things, he helped me with a couple of others and so on. He is someone that’s really skilled and I appreciate exchanging thoughts with people like that.

2: It has taken quite some time to find a way into the PS3, What do you think of Sonys achievements in security? Anything else you want to say about the PS3?

The playstation 3 security was more the work of IBM than sony’s the idea of using isolated spus as crypto engines in order to hide keys was brilliant, I do not think sony implemented such an idea properly though, as such their current architecture has a few security design flaws on its own that I noticed.

I believe it has pretty much been security through obfuscation all along.

3: What do you think of Sonys removal of Other OS as a preventative measure, Do you feel it is right to blame ‘hackers’ or ‘pirates’ for its removal?

I believe sony wanted a pretext to remove otheros and found one in Geohot’s hack. I do not believe this is the right approach, it would have paid off to talk with hackers and homebrew developers in the first place and give them compromises, in fact the playstation 3 remained unhacked until sony chose to release ps3 slim systems without the otheros feature in.

4: Assuming you choose to answer the above, Do you have a counter argument for Sonys statements? and do you think Sony could have fixed this without removing the feature?

Yes of course they could have, there are several existing ways to close this exploit effectively without removing the otheros feature, they wanted it removed and used it as another pretext to do so, pretty much like the phony one they used for the slim console pretexting that they would have to implement support for it on the new hardware (while it actually would have worked just fine on it, should they had enabled option to do it in the first place). The otheros feature did cause a few security concerns regarding the fact that you could pretty much cold boot the console and use otheros to dump lv2, this could easily be fixed by ensuring that the selected os option is only applied upon proper shutdown though.

5: How far along is development with the PS3? How much control do we really have? How much work is left for a system that is as ‘open’ as the PSP currently is? If you were to compare the PS3′s current development status to another device such as the PSP which stage would you compare it to?

We already have a lot, and that’s in a sense the problem because we have too much to work with, too much to reverse… These things take time.
A huge amount of work is required before we get to a level comparable to the one we have with the psp right now. I would say months at least, if not years of work may still be required.

6: Are you personally working on the PS3 and if so can you tell us what you are up to? Can you tell us of any personal objectives?

I am working on the ps3, so are countless of other skilled developers out there, as for my objective, that would be unrestricted homebrews on the device, either on top of lv2 or by the mean of a RTOS.

7: Member Milkyjoe asks, Why doesn’t Mathieulh release his lvl 1,2 and 3 dumps of the PS3 firmware.

Because that’s copyrighted data (there is no such thing as lv3 by the way) and I am certainly not putting that in the wild. The people that have a need for these either already have those dumps or the capacities to dump them. There is a certain site (which I wont name) that has been literally whining to various developers (including me) so that we “share” (read leak) the dumps in our possession. They claimed they would do wonders so long as they had the dumps in the first place. When someone finally dumped lv1 and released it in the wild, what did this site ever did with the dump ? Nothing. This is what happens when all the “devs” you have can’t use ida or reverse engineer and that the only thing they could ever do is look at strings with an hex editor.
On that note I will leave you to think about this.

8: Member Breakdown has asked multiple questions.

1. Now that you have dumps of the HV etc.. is there any reverse engineering going on and Is it possible to execute homebrew code on a retail machine if so are there any plans to give the public that ability?

Yes there are a few people reversing these dumps as we speak, things take time, when there is any development, you shall be kept posted.

2. If developers are capable of creating custom PUP’s would it be possible to patch future official firmwares to retain the Other OS feature for members that have already updated to 3.21?

No, because of the coreos revocation checks (among other things) this is for now not a possibility.

9: Will the Other OS/Playstation 3 hardware still be open to the same attacks when Geohot releases his planned method of upgrade?

Yes it will.

10: Do you have a rough ETA for when end-users will have something to play with for example homebrew such as a Quake 1 port?

No idea. You can already play Quake 1 on otheros using linux I believe.

[VIA]

On the first of April 2010, Sony killed the Other OS, via a Firmware update, this annoyed most of you and you refused to update, you used the proxy method to bypass the firmware update, to play online and keep the Other OS that you payed for, Sony killed the proxy, so now you are forced to update in order to play online.

Some PS3 owners looked at getting a refund and one customer successfully got a partial refund from online store Amazon, unfortunately this will no longer be an option according to THINQ, this is what the website had to say:

Sony says that it has no intention of reimbursing retailers if they offer fat PS3 users partial refunds because of the removal of the Install Other OS function.

Last week, the first PS3 user successfully secured a partial refund from Amazon UK as compensation for the removal of the ability to run Linux on the console.

The punter quoted European law in order to persuade the online retailer that the goods he had bought in good faith were no longer fit for purpose because of the enforcement of firmware update 3.21, which meant that users who chose to keep the Other OS functionality would lose the ability to play the latest games or connect to the PlayStation Network.

Sony was accused of contravening the Sale of Goods Act and more than one forum poster across the web suggested that a class action suit might be in order.

But Sony is standing fast, insisting it has done nothing wrong as the company’s PR head honcho David Wilson told us. “We do understand the frustration a small number of consumers may feel at SCE’s decision to provide an upgrade to the firmware to disable the Linux operating system but we refute any suggestion that this action is in any way a contravention of the terms of Sale of Goods Act,” he said.

The fact that the ability to install Linux was heavily promoted when the console was launched by Sony Computer Entertainment (the word ‘computer’ is important here) seems to hold little sway for the company or its spokesman.

“The PS3 is first and foremost a games console and our marketing materials for the console reflect this,” said Wilson. “The console packaging and the in-box manual for the console do not refer to the use of Linux on the console. Rather, the console packaging states that the product’s design and specifications are subject to change without notice and that the system software within the console is subject to a limited licence between SCE and the consumer, and this licence permits SCE to update the system software and services offered from time to time.”

The fact of the matter is that no end of complex Terms and Conditions, or even the most draconian End User License Agreements (EULA) have the power to override the law of the land, and Sony is fully aware of this. The company knows that it is protected by those same laws.

“The provision in the Sale of Goods Act which requires an item to be fit for a purpose made known by the consumer to the retailer prior to purchase and confirmed by the retailer applies only to the contract between the retailer and the consumer,” Sony told us. “The decision by Amazon to give a  consumer a partial refund is clearly between Amazon and the consumer, but we do not expect the decision to have a legal basis and we have no plans to compensate retailers.”

So it looks like fat PS3 owners have three choices:

1. Continue using Linux but give up the ability to download games from the PlayStation store, play disk-based PS3 games which require version 3.21 or higher, play Blu-Ray Disks which require profile updates or download movie.

2. Give up Linux altogether and use the PS3 the way Sony now wants you to use it.

3. Get an £84 refund from your retailer and put the money towards an XBox.

There is, of course, a fourth way. You could wait for the hackers who caused these shenanigans in the first place to release a fiddled firmware update which would allow you to do all of the above.

Source:  http://www.thinq.co.uk/news/2010/4/14/sony-refuses-to-sanction-ps3-refunds/

Unfortunately it seems that those of you that were using the various proxies, to bypass the firmware update, are now blocked from accessing PSN.

Various forum users have posted having problems and a few of you have came on IRC looking for help, also esteemed console guru Mathieulh,

stated this via his Twitter:

The consumers ps3 3.15 Firmware can no longer connect to the psn. P.S. I still strongly advise anyone not to update their consoles to 3.21.

So for those of you having problems, have patience and do not update, regardless of how much you are tempted.