If you’ve ever wanted to create home brew video games for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), you may now be one major step closer. A user by the name GeoHot, the same user who helped to crack the iPhone, has posted the root key – a critical part of code signing. By using this code, anyone with enough technical expertise can run home brew games on their PlayStation 3.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
Home Brew video games have been around for a long time. Developing such games enables users to sharpen their coding and development skills. Still, with the root key found, this becomes a double-edged sword as it also helps users play downloaded games directly on to their PS3.
“Props to fail0verflow for the asymmetric half. No donate link,” GeoHot wrote, “just use this info wisely. I do not condone piracy”
There’s always an interesting twist to this sort of thing. Does the person that cracks your security protection you spent who knows how much time, money and effort in to become an enemy or the kind of person you would want to hire because that person was clearly smart enough to crack that protection in the first place?
“If you want your next console to be secure,” Geohot added, “get in touch with me. “any of you 3. It’d be fun to be on the other side.”
Kotaku made an interesting observation:
Crucially, because this key lies at the very heart of the PS3 hardware itself, it appears that if it has been cracked, it will be almost impossible to repair (even via firmware updates), as altering the existing key would run the risk of rendering all existing PS3 software inoperable.
What I think will be interesting in the months ahead is if this sparks a new console generation wars with another generation of consoles. One thing is for sure, if this key is legit, copy protection for the PS3 will be about as useless as the CSS copy protection on DVDs.
[Via /.]
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
