Recent claims suggest that a group of hardware hackers have successfully hacked and Jail-broken a PlayStation 3 which would allow users to play home-made and pirated games on their console.
Currently the PlayStation 3 is reported as being the only games console that has not been modded, even though the games console is already more than three years old. A group of people who call themselves PSJailbreak, say that they intend to release and sell a USB dongle, which contains software which will enable users to save games to their console’s hard drive. It is currently expected that this dongle will be available for sale, in a few weeks time.
PSJailbreak Dongle - image from walyou.com
An online video made by an Australian distributor, shows him simply inserting the dongle to make it work.
The video shows someone going to a “Backup Manager” on the console, which appears to show a list of the games stored in the hard drive. The video then shows the person loading one of the games.
Sceptics seem to believe that the video(s) are a hoax, or they show the hack working on a “debug-PS3” or “dev-unit” which is usually used by developers to test code on the machine.
This hack has been claimed to work on all PlayStation 3s. The way this hack is said to work, is that it turns/unlocks a PlayStation 3 that you would buy on the High Street, into a “Dev-Unit”, this meaning, users can play games saved on the hard-drive, without the need for disks, and home-made games can be played, as when the unit is in “Dev-Mode” games do not need to be signed by Sony.
Okay, so before you go and try to buy one, take this into account first.
The legality of this and similar products varies between different countries. For example, here in Europe, the product is Legal to distribute in France, and was ruled Illegal in the High Court in the United Kingdom.
This has been made clear by Nintendo, makers of the Wii and DS handheld console. Defendants in court cases have argued that they will allow gamers to play home-made games.
It is believed that this is an attack to try and reduce levels of media piracy, in an already struggling industry.
This Jailbreak is different to the one claimed earlier this year, in January by George Hotz (iPhone Hacker), who never released his PS3 hack.
It is expected that Sony will soon release an update that will block the use of this dongle.
