5 ms·

That reminds me of a video that I watched a few months ago about how an earlier generation of PlayStation got jailbroken very late in its lifecycle because Sony

That reminds me of a video that I watched a few months ago about how an earlier generation of PlayStation got jailbroken very late in its lifecycle because Sony decided to disable Linux (or something like that, I don’t remember). As long as that feature was available, nobody cared to hack the console because they could do what they want, but as soon as Sony pulled the feature, the console was hacked in a very short time.

knorker 4y ago
PS3. Disabling Linux, as I remember it, basically instantly got it jailbroken. Suddenly not just pirates out to save/make money, but hobbyists too, wanted to break it.
- yebyen 4y ago
  Yeah, hobbyists like the US Air Force Research Lab (I imagine, I don't have any info to suggest they actually had to literally jailbreak their PS3s in order to build their supercomputer, but just making a jab) If it's good enough for the USAF, it should be good enough for hobbyists to have a go around with it!
  - frozenlettuce 4y ago
    Oil & gas companies as well, for their drilling and prospecting simulations.
    - yebyen 4y ago
      Seriously a bit miffed at the characterization of people who have bought a piece of hardware to install Free and Open Source Software on it (and then been absolutely rugged by the manufacturer) as "pirates out to save/make money, and hobbyists too" Every business I have ever worked at has either been built almost exclusively on Open Source software, or a bank that ran almost exclusively on Microsoft. We're not just pirates and hobbyists!
  - lapser 4y ago
    I think USAF and other companies were likely part of the reason Sony removed Linux support. Generally, a PS3 was a lot cheaper than the equivalent PC/server. Sony typically sells consoles at a loss and makes profits from the game sales. The likes of USAF, researchers, and other companies were buying PS3s in bulk, and using OtherOS functionality without utilizing the primary use of PS3s: games. Often these projects didn't need any GPU power, and OtherOS had nearly full access to the CPU (iirc it had access to the main PPE and 7 out of 8 SPEs). Thus, Sony likely was not making enough money from the consoles USAF et al. bought.
    - yebyen 4y ago
      IMO that is Sony's problem, selling special purpose hardware that could be general purpose but locking it down so that your business model is secure... after the point of sale... seems a bit sneaky. I enjoyed many hours of gaming on the PS2 and I bought it (in part) because I would be able to install Linux on it. I still managed to become a Linux guy today, in spite of the rug by Sony, and I suppose there's nothing overtly wrong with clarifying with an update that the primary intended use of your product is in fact its primary intended use, but as a hobbyist (dang it, now I've gone and done that again)...
      - kmeisthax 4y ago
        There was actually a class-action lawsuit about this, but Sony played a lot of games to keep the rationale for locking out OtherOS out of the discovery process. It wound up being just another one of those kinds of settlements - i.e. a large-sounding number being awarded to so many plaintiffs in the class that its basically pennies per person. My guess is that they don't want to say the quiet part out loud: i.e. they took away OtherOS because they weren't getting the tariff exemptions they wanted and they don't actually want people using these devices for non-royalty-bearing activities (e.g. piracy and homebrew).
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Now, if only someone could figure out how to make a printer useful in ways other than putting ink to paper in the same manner
- Narishma 4y ago
  It's the other way around. Linux was removed as a reaction to it being used to jailbreak the PS3 and allow piracy.
  - knorker 4y ago
    Well then that must be another type of jailbreak. If pirates managed to get from Linux to pirate copies running, then that's not the same exploit as getting from no-Linux to Linux. If it were, then there would be no point in Sony blocking Linux. So the no-Linux to "full" surely must have been invented post-Linuxblock?
that_guy_iain 4y ago
I remember it very differently. They disabled Linux because it got jailbroken and that was how they jailbroke it. If they didn't jailbreak the PS3 they wouldn't have disabled Linux. I think it was GeoHot who cracked it, I think it was because they used the same cryptographic key for all machines or something like that. This isn't a story of how taking away freedom from users resulted in piracy, this is a story of how piracy took freedoms away from uesrs.
- skyyler 4y ago
  Your memory may not be as good as you remember. This history wiki doesn't seem to imply any causality between the jailbreak and the removal of OtherOS. https://atunnic.gitbook.io/tnpsh-wiki/welcome-to-wiki/ps3-history https://atunnic.gitbook.io/tnpsh-wiki/welcome-to-wiki/ps3-hi... September 1st [3.00]: The PS3 slim is released, the first model without OtherOS. December 26th [3.15]: GeoHot pulls information from the USB bus regarding the Cell processor's SPI port and a theoretical attack vector. January 22nd [3.15]: GeoHot gains full access to the system memory and processor. April 1st [3.21]: OtherOS is removed from all PS3s. August 19th [3.41]: PS Jailbreak dongle is announced and confirmed working.
- ralfd 4y ago
  I tried to google it, but on hn there wasn't much discussion about it. 13 years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225990 > This has to be in direct response to George Hotz (geohot)'s PS3 exploits. Edit: I found: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1227084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1227084 > This appears to be in response to the announcements of PS3 hypervisor exploits that rely on the use of OtherOS (specifically, Linux), since in the past Sony has insisted that they had no plans to ever deprecate Linux support, let alone force it in this manner: https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss-dev/2009-August/006965.html https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss-dev/2009-August/0...
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  1. Sony having a predictable reaction to piracy is not (and would not be) the same as "piracy took freedoms away from users". 2. You got your facts/timeline wrong. GeoHot didn't publish his hack until after OtherOS was disabled.

knorker 4y ago

PS3. Disabling Linux, as I remember it, basically instantly got it jailbroken. Suddenly not just pirates out to save/make money, but hobbyists too, wanted to break it.

yebyen 4y ago
Yeah, hobbyists like the US Air Force Research Lab (I imagine, I don't have any info to suggest they actually had to literally jailbreak their PS3s in order to build their supercomputer, but just making a jab) If it's good enough for the USAF, it should be good enough for hobbyists to have a go around with it!
- frozenlettuce 4y ago
  Oil & gas companies as well, for their drilling and prospecting simulations.
  - yebyen 4y ago
    Seriously a bit miffed at the characterization of people who have bought a piece of hardware to install Free and Open Source Software on it (and then been absolutely rugged by the manufacturer) as "pirates out to save/make money, and hobbyists too" Every business I have ever worked at has either been built almost exclusively on Open Source software, or a bank that ran almost exclusively on Microsoft. We're not just pirates and hobbyists!
- lapser 4y ago
  I think USAF and other companies were likely part of the reason Sony removed Linux support. Generally, a PS3 was a lot cheaper than the equivalent PC/server. Sony typically sells consoles at a loss and makes profits from the game sales. The likes of USAF, researchers, and other companies were buying PS3s in bulk, and using OtherOS functionality without utilizing the primary use of PS3s: games. Often these projects didn't need any GPU power, and OtherOS had nearly full access to the CPU (iirc it had access to the main PPE and 7 out of 8 SPEs). Thus, Sony likely was not making enough money from the consoles USAF et al. bought.
  - yebyen 4y ago
    IMO that is Sony's problem, selling special purpose hardware that could be general purpose but locking it down so that your business model is secure... after the point of sale... seems a bit sneaky. I enjoyed many hours of gaming on the PS2 and I bought it (in part) because I would be able to install Linux on it. I still managed to become a Linux guy today, in spite of the rug by Sony, and I suppose there's nothing overtly wrong with clarifying with an update that the primary intended use of your product is in fact its primary intended use, but as a hobbyist (dang it, now I've gone and done that again)...
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      There was actually a class-action lawsuit about this, but Sony played a lot of games to keep the rationale for locking out OtherOS out of the discovery process. It wound up being just another one of those kinds of settlements - i.e. a large-sounding number being awarded to so many plaintiffs in the class that its basically pennies per person. My guess is that they don't want to say the quiet part out loud: i.e. they took away OtherOS because they weren't getting the tariff exemptions they wanted and they don't actually want people using these devices for non-royalty-bearing activities (e.g. piracy and homebrew).
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Now, if only someone could figure out how to make a printer useful in ways other than putting ink to paper in the same manner
Narishma 4y ago
It's the other way around. Linux was removed as a reaction to it being used to jailbreak the PS3 and allow piracy.
- knorker 4y ago
  Well then that must be another type of jailbreak. If pirates managed to get from Linux to pirate copies running, then that's not the same exploit as getting from no-Linux to Linux. If it were, then there would be no point in Sony blocking Linux. So the no-Linux to "full" surely must have been invented post-Linuxblock?

that_guy_iain 4y ago

I remember it very differently. They disabled Linux because it got jailbroken and that was how they jailbroke it. If they didn't jailbreak the PS3 they wouldn't have disabled Linux. I think it was GeoHot who cracked it, I think it was because they used the same cryptographic key for all machines or something like that. This isn't a story of how taking away freedom from users resulted in piracy, this is a story of how piracy took freedoms away from uesrs.

skyyler 4y ago
Your memory may not be as good as you remember. This history wiki doesn't seem to imply any causality between the jailbreak and the removal of OtherOS. https://atunnic.gitbook.io/tnpsh-wiki/welcome-to-wiki/ps3-history https://atunnic.gitbook.io/tnpsh-wiki/welcome-to-wiki/ps3-hi... September 1st [3.00]: The PS3 slim is released, the first model without OtherOS. December 26th [3.15]: GeoHot pulls information from the USB bus regarding the Cell processor's SPI port and a theoretical attack vector. January 22nd [3.15]: GeoHot gains full access to the system memory and processor. April 1st [3.21]: OtherOS is removed from all PS3s. August 19th [3.41]: PS Jailbreak dongle is announced and confirmed working.
ralfd 4y ago
I tried to google it, but on hn there wasn't much discussion about it. 13 years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225990 > This has to be in direct response to George Hotz (geohot)'s PS3 exploits. Edit: I found: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1227084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1227084 > This appears to be in response to the announcements of PS3 hypervisor exploits that rely on the use of OtherOS (specifically, Linux), since in the past Sony has insisted that they had no plans to ever deprecate Linux support, let alone force it in this manner: https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss-dev/2009-August/006965.html https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss-dev/2009-August/0...
thomastjeffery 4y ago
1. Sony having a predictable reaction to piracy is not (and would not be) the same as "piracy took freedoms away from users". 2. You got your facts/timeline wrong. GeoHot didn't publish his hack until after OtherOS was disabled.