PS3 firmware 3.60 is live with cloud saves ... oh, and hacker suggests PS3 is 're-secured'

by Christopher Grant on Mar 10th 2011 7:20AM

In addition to its ongoing courtroom campaign to thwart hackers, Sony hasn't given up trying to patch its PlayStation 3 problems with another (everybody now!) firmware update! This time, it's not just a security update: For the PlayStation Plus subscribers out there, firmware 3.60 includes the nifty cloud-based save service (demoed on video after the break) while non PS+ users can enjoy setting "the amount of time before a controller turns off after you have stopped using it."

As for those glaring security holes? Noted PS3 hacker Youness Alaoui (aka KaKaRoToKS) posits, "For now, it looks to me (at first glance) that the PS3 has been re-secured, but it doesn't mean it can't be broken again from scratch." DigitalFoundry explains that while Geohot's reveal of the "mtldr" key irrevocably broke the PS3's "chain of trust," Sony's solution effortlessly sidesteps this seemingly insurmountable breach: "According to Alaoui's quick analysis, Sony simply doesn't use mtldr any more, opting for a new security system that could possibly require a completely new exploit to be uncovered."

Even money says someone somewhere will uncover that exploit, but for now, it sounds like Sony can breathe a sigh of relief.

[Thanks for the vid, Johnra (and everyone else that sent this in!)]

Via: DigitalFoundry
Source: @KaKaRoToKS

Tags: hacks, playstation, PlayStation-Plus, ps3, ps3-firmware, ps3-firmware-3.60, PSN

Reader Comments (93)

YAY! Awesome great news for real gamers....

@Frank the tank: So its safe to play MW2 again?

@216

You can still play online with old custom firmware's so the update isn't making any difference.

@216

If you respect you sanity, it's never safe.

@Frank the tank
"real gamers"...exactly how does not having custom firmware, and homebrew make you more of a "real gamer"?
How does paying for a game make you any more "real" than someone who doesn't?

I listen to A LOT of music, I used to buy albums every Tuesday (own over 500) but stopped because the CD became a dead format, and building the collection was useless as I'd just rip them and put them on all my devices. So now that I pretty much download all my albums, does that mean I don't care about music anymore? Does that mean I'm not a "real music lover"?

@mywhitenoise

Do you pirate the music or buy it legitimately? Because if you pirate then no, you're not a "real music lover"

Bottom line, those who pay actually give a shit about the industry. That makes them real lovers of the media.

@AmanteDuck
I care about the music, that's why I see them at live shows and LISTEN to what they create. Musicians don't make shit off album sales, the RIAA does. Thank you for proving my point, you buying something doesn't make you any better...it just makes you look like an entitled, smug, dumb-ass.

@AmanteDuck - If I buy games used, does not make me not a real gamer? Seeing as how it only supports Gamestop and not the part of the industry that actually produces the games.

Devil's advocate, wooOOooOo

@mywhitenoise

Ooooh right. I forgot. I buy music so I don't LISTEN to the created music. Damn. I forgot.

You never stated HOW you support the industry. Just made a comment leading to an assumption that you simply pirate. But you go to shows. Thats a good thing. You must spend a lot of money on seeing the shows of every artist you've pirated, huh?

I'm not saying I like supporting the RIAA or the corporations that control the music, but I doubt we'd have as much access to the talent out there without them. I'll take my chances with being a smug, entitled, dumb ass. It's worked out pretty well so far :)

@AmanteDuck The RIAA spits out the most talentless mainstream crap. I would not be surprised if you listened to shit like Lady Gaga, Nickelback, Muse, and The Black Eyed Peas.
Try downloading some music, you might find something new...and something actually worth listening to.

@AmanteDuck
"Bottom line, those who pay actually give a shit about the industry. That makes them real lovers of the media. "

For the record, my sister buys CDs but she listens to most awful music imaginable. Kei$ha, Katy Perry, the Killers, Shakira, Beyonce...
I, on the other hand, pirate music but know WAY more about bands that she (and you've probably) never heard of. So go ahead and tell me I don't really love music, I'd school you in a second when it comes to knowledge of music.

@mywhitenoise
Yeah, because the only pirates know anything about music.
Some nice logic you've got there.

@mywhitenoise

As a musician, let me let you in on a little industry secret. Yes, we don't get much from album sales. However, the record companies use those numbers when determining whether to sponsor a tour or not, and how much advertising money they wanna put into it. If your sales suck, you're not gonna be promoted to go on good tours and play good gigs.

Case and point, if everyone pirates your music and doesn't pay for it, you still suffer whether they attend the 1 or 2 shows you play or not. That's the unfortunate truth about it all. And if you feel that you're supporting an industry by pirating it, you're sadly mistaken. You're not only hurting the RIAA or the record companies, you ARE hurting the artists, you're just too naive or stupid to realize it. Being righteous about stealing what others put their hearts into to create doesn't make you an awesome appreciative lover of the industry, it just makes you a self-entitled elitist asshole. Get off the soap box before you hurt yourself.

@DreadArrow
No, but if I had to blind buy every single album I was curious about...then I would either be broke, or have a limited knowledge on what's available and rely on mainstream radio to help choose songs for me.
The first step to discovering good music, is LISTENING to it, not buying it.

@216 It has actually really clear for me over the past week or so, and especially today and yesterday. I have barely seen any hackers. YAY

@AmanteDuck Really? Giving huge corporations more money for inhibiting artists makes you a "music lover?" I had no idea buying things was a factor.

@mywhitenoise
I like how after someone from the music industry proved you were wrong you completely change your argument around. Face it you lost. You don't support the bands by stealing their albums and just going to the concerts. They may get some money, but no where near what their next payment for their next CD would be, or how big of a tour they go on.

@madsci
What band are you in

for now? lol....some dick will have it broken within the week.....really need to get it some puzzy....

at any rate....I have been trying to navigate the new forums to see how many "3.60 bricked my PS3 threads" I could find before updating....

all I could find is it messing up friendslist......but that could be because they are not realizing that its just putting it in the order of last activity...

@Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi you probably wont read much of it bricked my system today give it a week and I know the forums they'll go ape shit for anything.

@Frank the tank

I dunno after 2.4 it only took hours....by this time there was a thread with over 50 pages......

@Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi

Agreed. Also, no self-respecting hacker is going to admit defeat. The kind that go after sensitive information deal with much more resistance than this on a regular basis.

Part of me hopes that this article is correct and that Sony can now stay on top of things before I find a reason to pick my PS3 controller back up this summer. There's gonna be a bunch of good games out in the coming months, some of which I plan to get for my PS3 and not my XBox because I don't want to look at hacked up leaderboards.

It may be worth getting a second PS3 now that cloudsaves are possible. Shame that Sony's disregard for intellectual property rights has resulted in a ban on new PS3s.

@NormanCod da hell are you talking about? if by "intellectual property right" you mean "be allowed to ignore the fact that game developers need to earn money too", then yes, it's too bad. For you. You are wrong.

@Design by Adrian
It took me only a few seconds to determine NormonCod is in Europe and was most likely referring to this news when talking about Sony not respecting Intellectual Property, while at the same time they unleash hordes of lawyers to protect their own.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/28/ps3-shipments-blocked-in-europe-as-lg-wins-preliminary-injunctio/

Don't be so quick to lump other users with the people stealing their PS3 games.

@Design by Adrian

I'm fairly certain he's reffering to Thousands of ps3's being seized in Europe because they apparently infringed on LG's patent.

So I guess You are wrong.

@NormanCod
Good news, the injunction was lifted, but the legal dispute comes. Patent law is such a grey area; I mean I don't think Blu-Ray would have even won without the PS3.

This is a nice update, a new (and requested) feature and even more security patching.

However, there will be numerous complaints about it being yet another useless update from Sony, a futile attempt to close down the immense piracy/homebrew scene and the fact that this patch doesn't contain cross-game chat.

@Raniz85 Let's not forget the people whose PS3's get bricked when they update, people who couldn't upgrade HDD because one of the updates introduced a bug that was already fixed some patches before.

Sony is too busy pushing security patches over adding any features users have been asking for since the system came out. How many updates has Sony released in the past 6 months that were security fixes. How many updates had features users have been asking for...

But I'm sure you don't see it this way, Sony is "AAA+++ WILL BUY AGAIN XD" in your book. Sony can do no wrong and how dare these customers demand features, that's just a silly notion.

@Raniz85 How is it useless? I protect the good users from being hacked by bad users. How can a security update be useless?

@Weiji
My point is that no matter what Sony does people will complain, if it's a security update people will complain because it doesn't contain any new features, if it's a feature update people will complain that it is the wrong feature etc.

I think it's a bit harsh of you to assume I'm a fanboy just because I'm getting tired of all the crap people are spewing over every update Sony releases. I've got no issues with them trying to improve/maintain the integrity of the PS3 - since the updates go rather fast to download/install for me and I usually do it while cooking, taking a shower or before I leave for work I'm not bothered by them releasing a new update every two months or so - but that doesn't mean that I'll blindly approve of everything Sony does, nor does it mean that I will go out and buy stuff just because it says 'Sony' on it.

@Tereso
The blank line is the border between me being sincere and me being cynical.

@Raniz85 You're right. I like how people dog on PSN+, which is optional, but they don't say a word about 1.)paying $60 a year for XBL and 2.)the fact you have to even pay for XBL at this point. I feel my XBL subscription is the ability to purchase the ability to purchase. MS needs to make XBL free, or at least give gamers the ability to play games online unhindered. I can do it on everything except the 360 which makes no sense.

@Weiji

dude stop whining. did you own a PS3 at launch? how many extra features has Sony given us for free? just because they haven't done a whole lot recently doesn't negate the fact that they have been more than generous with new features. people seem to forget that just as recently as last gen, you had to buy a whole new console for new features.

so keep complaining about them taking away the backwards compatibility and otherOS that you probably didn't use anyway, and crying for your cross game voice chat, and any other generic complaint you ungrateful bastards spew all over the internet. i'll be over here enjoying my PS3, appreciating how it's grown over the years.

@SoCoolCurt

"people seem to forget that just as recently as last gen, you had to buy a whole new console for new features."

Ummm, we still do kinda. PS3 Slim DOES have hardware features that the FAT doesn't have. For example: Bravia Sync is only for the Slims.

@BlazeKing The emphasis is on "kinda". Just look at all those people that brick any version of the Fat and complain that features are missing in the Slim (backwards compatibility, "Other OS" for those that never updated their firm ware that far, ...).

I saved 51 game saves to the cloud and used 47mb of my 150mb allocated.

I don't see how 150MB will be enough or why we really have a cap.

There's also no auto save or save all feature, you have to manually save each file.

@Weiji

If the PS3 version of Dragon Age Origins works the same with saves as the 360 version then their going to be 17mg each.

150mg of cloud based storage wont even give you 9 saves in that case.

@Weiji

Autosave is impractical, or do you want to wait each time a game with checkpoints to upload the file to Sony servers? come save files are small some are a few megabytes. I prefer they add an option of synchronization by request, newer local files are uploaded and newer remote file are downloadded

@This Little Man Says His Name Is

Consider yourself "lucky", the PC version had saves far above 100mb lol...
I remember back in the day, when FULL GAMES weren't even 100mb xD

@Da Mr

My whole characters folder for DA : O on PC is only 70mg.

@Weiji

You can bet they will expand this over time, once it becomes a more significant problem.

@This Little Man Says His Name Is

Mine is "only" 700 Mb.

@Weiji
"There's also no auto save"
The press release claims that the from now on devs may choose to include a save to cloud feature in their games.

@Weiji
The limit does seem rather arbitrary, but I don't think this service is supposed to replace hard saves. Maybe for 3-5 games you are playing at a time this can be useful for playing on multiple systems.

@This Little Man Says His Name Is

Just do what I'm going to do. Continue to use a usb key to copy saves over, and use the cloud for the locked saves.

way to go, Sony! Kick their a$$e$!

Humans are so int-er-est-ing.

"the amount of time before a controller turns off after you have stopped using it."

What? I could do that before.

@Lucky48

kingalekz is right; even before this FWU there was the option to autoshut the controller after x time of inactivity. I've always had my set to 10 mins. since I could remember.

@def PD
You could?... I just checked my system right now (haven't updated to the this firmware) and i don't have it. All i have the option to do is set on or off...

The only thing i could set the time for, is the amount of time it takes for my ps3 to auto-shutdown after idling.

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PS3 firmware 3.60 is live with cloud saves ... oh, and hacker suggests PS3 is 're-secured'

Reader Comments (93)

Posted: Mar 10th 2011 7:25AM Frank the tank said

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