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Root keys for Sony’s PlayStation 3 go public

139 points| Uncle_Sam | 15 years ago |geohot.com | reply

75 comments

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[+] ronnier|15 years ago|reply
"if you want your next console to be secure, get in touch with me. any of you 3."

I would take the mans word and hire him. I'd even through Apple into his list, he did after all release jailbreaks for the iPhone too.

[+] sliverstorm|15 years ago|reply
Bunnie, the original hacker of the first Xbox, was brought on as council by Microsoft to help improve security for the Xbox 360. You can see the results if you ever get deep into the security models of the two.
[+] marshray|15 years ago|reply
I'm not so sure I'd want to take a job having just made my new chain of command look like incompetent idiots, they'd probably find a way to repay the favor. They'd just make him to sign a bunch of long-term NDAs and fire him 6 months later. If this guy had much experience in the workplace he'd know that development like this usually happens when an organization has systematically driven out the detail-oriented security-minded people. They tend to be on the low end of the "net reduction in buglist items per salary dollar" scale.

On the other hand, there are any number of independent security assessment/pen testing firms that would love to have this guy's skills. He might even end up working on consoles. That's probably the way he should approach it.

[+] boredguy8|15 years ago|reply
Clearly brilliant, but he also faked a photo of a jailbroken iPhone 4, which (apparently) motivated his partial withdraw from the scene.

Though talk about a comeback... This is a much better online "hire me" than the ones that were popular on HN several months ago.

[+] geoffw8|15 years ago|reply
Surely, someone has to hire this guy. Forget Apple. Intel? Nokia? IBM?
[+] Omega191|15 years ago|reply
Let's not forget that fail0verflow found the keys. After this he saw that it was possible to exploit the loaders.
[+] burgerbrain|15 years ago|reply
Didn't this happen with their last round of consoles, and didn't they hire the people that did this last time around? I recall something about this from that case with the guy who was chipping in CA a few weeks ago.
[+] sybreon|15 years ago|reply
From the mathematician on stage: "and for some reason, Sony uses the same random number all the time!" - classic!
[+] Swannie|15 years ago|reply
I'm not sure if that was hyperbole or not.

As I understand it, all that was required was for them to use the same random number /twice/. Let's say you're Sony and you sign a patch, release it, realise there is a minor fix, and release within 2hours... maybe in your rush you failed to regenerate the random seed?

Or, my initial thoughts, someone inside Sony did this maliciously?

[+] nkassis|15 years ago|reply
Can you provide a time index for that in the videos?
[+] cantbecool|15 years ago|reply
Looking at GeoHotz accolades on his Wikipedia page makes me feel like a terrible underachiever.
[+] st3fan|15 years ago|reply
Wow. How did this happen? Was the root key stored in the PS3? Or was it brute forced?
[+] jpablo|15 years ago|reply
So what are the implications of this ? Homebrew software ? Pirated games ?
[+] iloveponies|15 years ago|reply
Homebrew first and foremost, and reclaiming back the ability to run Linux on the consoles (and run it on the PS3 Slim as well). It's possible to pirate games with this knowledge, but from my understanding a lot of the Blu-ray security has not been broken at this point in time so these keys are by no means all you need to get up and start ripping those discs.