Hacker Irks Sony By Exploiting 'Unhackable' PS3 Firmware

Sony's troubles with its PS3 hacking controversies are going to persist despites its recent initial successes in court battles against hacker George Hotz.

There was news over the weekend that another hacker, Mathieu Hervais, found a way to exploit Sony PlayStation 3 firmware 3.56.

However, website Afterdawn.com said Hervais will not release the details online. I hesitated a lot before tweeting about it, but a bug allows exploiting metldr, the bootloader and 3.56+. I don't intent to ever unveil it... So much for unhackable ps3s though, he wrote on Twitter.

The hacker said he was not after fame or attention, but wanted to let the right people know this bug is there for the finding.

A U.S. federal court last week granted Sony a major success in its ongoing legal battle with PS3 hacker George Hotz when it allowed the company to get hold of the Internet IP addresses of whoever visited Hotz’s website since January last year.

Sony also asked that YouTube, Google and Twitter give data that could help ascertain who had access to information released by Hotz. Intially a judge denied that motion but Sony later won the right to subpoena the data. Sony is seeking unspecified damages from Hotz, also known as 'Geohot'.

Sony has said it will initiate legal action against anyone who posts the hacking tools or the encryption key released by Hotz. The 21-year-old hacker had revealed last month that his home had been raided in connection with the case.

Sony's uneasy battle with hackers was marked by the announcement of Hotz late 2009 that he was targeting PS3. He said in January 2010 he was able to hack the machine and gain read and write access and released the jailbreak for the public.

He released his jailbreak to public in January 2010, enabling any one to hack into the system using the OtherOS function in the system. This forced Sony to withdraw the OtherOS function from the machine which was required for running the hacked code. Sony did this by releasing a PlayStation 3 firmware update which removes the OtherOS function. Sony has since then fortified PS3 with the addition of advanced custom firmware.