PS3 finally hacked

The same guy who jailbroke the iPhone 3GS and original iPhone has hacked the Playstation 3, potentially making bootleg games playable and opening the console up to other unintended uses.

George Hotz writes on his blog that he's not revealing the exploit yet, because even though it's not patchable, Sony could make hacking the PS3 much harder. "I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware," Hotz writes.

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This hack makes the Playstation 3 the last of all the current generation consoles to fall to hackers. The Wii has a thriving homebrew community, and the Xbox 360 was hacked in 2006, though Microsoft has exacted revenge on those who play copied games. While the Playstation 3 has avoided this fate for over 3 years, Hotz wrote that his hack took five weeks to complete.

What happens now is not clear. Previous attempts to hack the Playstation 3 in order to play pirated games were only partially successful, with not every game working. CNet speculates that we could see Linux support return to the PS3 Slim after Sony removed it, or perhaps the ability to use the console as a regular computer. The ability to play emulators and other programs on the console could also become possible, but it's too early to tell because Hotz hasn't described his methods. In any case, it should be interesting to see how hackers use the console's powerful cell processor once they do learn how Hotz did it.

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Asked by a blog commenter where he found the knowledge to hack the PS3, Hotz answered simply, "My brain."

This of course shows that any security measure in a tech product can be hacked eventually, but you've got to give Sony props for holding hackers off for three years.

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