Hacker and researcher Youness Alaoui confirmed two things on Monday: he's working on a jailbreak for PS3 firmware 3.73, and that overeager script jockeys and homebrew junkies shouldn't expect it to be published any time soon.
Comparing the current progress to his past work on PS3 firmware, Alaoui said it may take some time before a simple-to-use 3.73 jailbreak can be released to the general public. And for now, the project is on hold. Hackers take vacations, too.
"I have the proof of concept, it works, but a solution that anyone can use where they just click a button and their PS3 gets jailbroken is still far from ready," Alaoui explained at his blog. He added that work will recommence in two weeks.
Far from a planned project, Alaoui claimed sheer boredom led him to revisit an earlier hack that still showed promise.
"The same hack I had in March is still valid today," he said. "I told a few people about it, but no one was interested in pursuing it further and actually exploiting that flaw (mainly because it requires a huge amount of work to get a proof of concept working). Ten days ago, I got bored and decided to start poking at it again, and yesterday I got my first .pkg installed on 3.73 firmware."
Alaoui refused to offer up details on exactly how the crack circumvents 3.73 for fear of Sony addressing the issue in a future update. However, he said that the jailbreak requires just one more major step.
"There are three 'jails' on the PS3," he explained. "I broke the first one which prevents you from installing anything, so now you can install your .pkg, great, but it won't run. That's the second jail."
Alaoui clarified that while he's waiting for help to smash open that second jail cell ("running apps...is not my area of expertise"), his method will ultimately not allow users to modify firmware or play stolen or backed-up games. The hacker told MyCE that he is staunchly against piracy.
"Modifying the firmware is not possible with my method, this means that you will not have a CFW, you will run your homebrew applications and games on an official firmware," he said. "This also means that without peek-and-poke support, none of the backup managers will work."
Alaoui disregarded potential complaints over the jailbreak's limitations, but considering how Sony handled George Hotz and fail0verflow's PS3 crack it's no big surprise.
"The purpose will be to allow people who are on 3.73 firmware to enjoy the homebrew games that were released, to play a bit with Eskiss, and to use Showtime for playing their movies," he said. "This should be more than enough for everyone." (via kakaroto.homelinux)
