Rumor: 'Rebug' custom firmware enabled 'free' PSN downloads, forced Sony's network shutdown

@Mr Hett I agree. I hate hackers and people who game share! These people are ruing the game industry. If they are not stopped we will have another PSP on our hands, where developers wouldn't support it anymore because they knew there games would just end up on file sharing sites!

@DannyL7

So... are you implying that DS developers have less common sense? Because by your deduction, the DS should have at least as little support as the PSP.

@Mr Hett Agreed.

@DannyL7
But Jack Tretton encouraged game sharing. In turn, I've bought A LOT more DLC by sharing with a couple of family members, rather than never giving the DLC the chance at all.

@IrateGamer It may be worth arguing that DS wasn't affected as much because PSP development costs are way more.

@mywhitenoise
I'm for game sharing as a controlled idea but this is far from controlled. Like when Valve gives a free copy of one of their games to you as a preorder bonus and says if you already have it you can gift it to a friend. I'm all for that in fact with Steams back end metrics I'm sure Valve wouldn't do it unless it helped their industry. but this is FAR from game sharing this is just theft that the developer and publisher are not supporting plain and simple and that just makes me sick!

@Mr Hett
It's a shame: online functionality is a great and arguably necessary addition to current-gen consoles and handhelds but it's pathetic that many people are hellbent on using it for stupidity like stealing games. Developers literally slave everyday -- often putting in more hours than the standard 9 to 5 workday -- and then people steal stuff...

@IrateGamer I think the difference there is that the DS makes its money from casual gamers that are much less likely to engage in piracy than the PSP's base of mostly "core' gamers.

@mywhitenoise

for sure sharing has been a big factor in our purchases, leading to more revenue than I would otherwise fork out.

@Mr Hett amen bro! I am more than happy to wait while sony finishes thePSN fixed. People need to get off their asses and work!

@C1ph3rDivyne

I'm assuming, no wait, I'm hoping that the majority of the pirates are the minors that werent given proper life lessons, or people stuck in menial jobs all their life due to similar skill deficiencies. If you work any job where there's a smidge of proprietarity to what's involved I believe you will have a hard time stealing other people's work, even if it is in a less guilt inducing digital form.

@IrateGamer Ask yourself this: Who has a DS? Mostly little kids. Little kids don't know how to work computers let alone hacks and those R4 things. DS piracy does exist but its not very noticeable because DS games sell a lot due to their demographic being kids.

@Mr Hett
While I agree with you............there's no grudge towards Sony for disabling your ability to play online games for a week for games you spent your hard earned money because they are protecting their wallets from a select group of users grabbing games for free, and not protecting you like they would like you to believe?

I mean sure the hackers are the catalyst and most of the blame falls on them but there's a paper trail here and Sony has great lawyers so the question to ask is, why is Sony making millions suffer when the can brick the console of a few thousand (thus making them buy another PS3) when they connect to PSN? I mean MS does it all the time and nobody bats an eyelid.

I do realize it's a lose lose situation but they shouldn't punish those that play by the rules when we know what the shut down is for.

@IrateGamer
PSP development costs were higher than the DS at least at first. But the PSP suffered more because there were fewer installed units. The DSs lead in sales and cheaper development meant that Devs lost less money to the piracy on the DS than they did on the PSP.

Sony's attempts to boost the sales of the system with new games didn't really improve the situation enough to reverse the problem because they reacted way too late, this was one thing that sony didn't do that specifically hurt it.

@Mr Hett Yes, be like everyone else! Be a sheep! Be a slave like everyone else. Everyone loves to work their lives away so someone else can get rich off their hard work. Line up and lets all do the same!
Lol, but seriously, get a job.....

@Slight of Ham

These guys definitely need some wrath from Karma to teach them a lesson, but probably wouldn't anyway.

Didn't something like this also happen to Xbox Live where they were able to use old codes to artificially give accounts more Xbox points to steal games as well?

@12thSAGEofGAMING

How where they lying, they said it was due to external intrusion, which this rumor backs up. All sony did was to keep their users calm and probably didnt want people to research up this hack.

@12thSAGEofGAMING Haven't you been lying to us, saying you do track, weightlift and all that stuff?

@kgoo867 I don't think you realize that just because they're hackers or pirates doesn't mean they have anything to do with Geohotz or Anon. you fail.

@12thSAGEofGAMING

Sony didn't lie about anything. They said they were doing maintenance, which they were. They said it was because of an "external intrusion," which it was. I don't know why people keep saying Sony was lying...

I didn't think it was anonymous either, but since they were so open about attacking the PSN they have become the most widely used scapegoat whenever anything goes even remotely wrong with the PSN. I'm not saying I like them. I think they're all dicks. But just because something goes wrong doesn't mean they did it.

This time it was pirates...who are also dicks.

@SirPwn4g3 It's highly probable they based their custom firmware on work done by Geohot, or using the leaked security key. Or something like that.
From what I understand about the hacking scene, these kind of pirate hacks aren't done by the competitive DIY hackers.

@12thSAGEofGAMING
Nothing in this article mentions that it makes PSN shut down for everyone, in fact, it says the opposite and mentions that it makes PSN games free for users (which requires you be online to download)

@RickGhastly

There's NPDRM in place for PSN stuff that end-users still can't get around.

@Ranus Studios - That's exactly what I was going to ask. It didn't make sense to bring down the entire PSN because pirates were pirating games they could already pirate anyway.

This seems a bit odd to me though. Ever since Portal 2 came out, I had been hearing that the PSN was secure, and that no one with a modded console could access it, because no custom firmware or workaround existed for firmware 3.6. Does this rebug firmware get around that somehow?

Either way, I'm with others here: Pay for your games guys. Seriously. (assuming that this is the real reason the PSN went down)

@Lambrick They're only stealing a little from Sony - they're stealing a lot from small, independent devs that don't necessarily make a lot of money. Pirates = scum, plain and simple.

@Axe99 Not to rain on your hate parade, but technically they ARE stealing from Sony. Sony has to pay the devs for those downloads.

@(Unverified)

Probably those users that had access to the dev servers didnt know the full extent of their capabilities, so maybe thats why they took it down? Not sure

@(Unverified) Oh? Didn't know I wasn't allowed to complain about not being able to play some Portal 2 with my friend...

@My Prerogative
Haven't you heard? You're only allowed to express your malcontent if it pleases (Unverified), whoever the hell that is.

I know, I missed the memo too. It's written on used toilet paper, so it was easy to miss.

@PointlessPuppies

"(unvarified)" is actually a collective group of registered users who got their account setting boinked by one of the Joysiq updates a few months back and never re-validated their accounts.

@Ranus Studios

I agree, but the only thing that doesn't make sense to me is the timing of the shutdown.

We can see from the links that this exploit has been in the wild since at least April 4th.

Yet they shut down PSN on April 20th, which was the worst possible day for Sony.

Last week, Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat were released. Both of these multiplatform titles were doing better preorder sales on the PS3 than the XBox 360, a rare multiplatform win for Sony. Also, the PS3-exclusive SOCOM 4 was released.

This should have been a huge win for Sony, showing that they could beat Microsoft head to head in sales for online multiplayer games.

Instead, the experience has been catastrophic, with a lot of users regretting that they chose PS3 for the multiplatform titles.

Why couldn't Sony have waited another week to shut down the network? The free-game exploit was only available to a few hundred virgin losers who were running old versions of the PS3 firmware, and it only worked for certain items on the PS Store. Sony could have eaten a few thousand dollars in stolen software to avoid turning their best week of the year into a PR disaster.

@copa I totally agree with what you said. I don't necessarily see why Sony would see it prudent to shut down PSN simply because users were "stealing" content. Nor would I consider downloading content with a hacked console an "external intrusion" per se. To me, an external intrusion indicates that unauthorized users were able to access internal PSN data such as user accounts, credit card information, etc. Sony wouldn't shut down an entire network of millions of users because they found out a few bad apples were stealing content. They would, however, shut down the network if they felt there was a possibility that users' personal info was in jeopardy.

@kentuckyfried
na. they should have not wasted their time with Hotz and instead put their money and time into something that is easy to prove is illegal like these guys. Sony just went after the wrong people.

@sigma8

Basically, they have to keep it offline until they can make the PSN secure again. So, yes.

@sigma8

They're probably making sure that custom firmware hacks can't use similar code to exploit other aspects of the system. And the ability to steal merchandise from the PSN store is a pretty big deal.

@Architecture
A big deal for them, and I do expect them to do something about it. That said, it means very little to you or me. If McDonalds got rid of all its French Fries because they were afraid someone was going to steal its recipe, that is ... certainly an interesting tactic, but I am not going to care about their corporate woes, I just want my darn french fries. Sony's first priority should be its customers, and keeping them happy. If they are failing to keep their paying customers happy, it doesn't matter how many copies of PSN games that pirates steal.

@kentuckyfried
Possible, but we don't have any solid information that the network at large was rendered insecure. I'm obviously commenting on this news as it was given... AFAIK, this isn't thoroughly confirmed to be the whole story.. If there is a substantial risk that legit customers' payment details or cloud stuff is at risk, then by all means Sony should keep things offline until they can bring it back up safely. But if they're keeping it offline in order to prevent people from buying stuff illegitimately (which is what the story implies), and all our legit information is safe, then Sony is just being ridiculously stingy--willing to p*ss off its paying customers in order to thwart a couple pirates.

@sigma8
Do you honestly think that Sony would actively avoid doing business with people for 6 days while it shuts down its entire online infrastructure straight just to "thwart a couple of pirates?" It's obvious the problem is a very serious one, and they've already said they've taken the opportunity to make the system more robust and secure, so they're not doing the bare minimum just to get it back up and running. Suffice to say, the reason for the outage lasting this long is obviously far more serious than just a couple of dudes pirating.

@PointlessPuppies
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's within the realm of possibility. Do you honestly believe that they never would?

There are some variables we don't know:
- how much do they usually make in a day?
- how much is being stolen per day?

If they are making iTunes-like profits every day, then, yeah, I'd be right there with you. It'd be silly to shut down the money pipe just because there was a minor leak that could be fixed while it stayed running.

However, if the service isn't making them a whole lot, and the thieves are actually stealing quite a bit of content, I could imagine them leaving it offline as they took their sweet time to fix it. As is plainly obvious, they could simply blame it on hackers and come off looking pretty innocent and noble. Whether they're being honest or not, that's exactly what they're doing right now, and it's being good PR. Just because it makes us feel better, that doesn't make it true (or false). We'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

At any rate: I'd like it up soon, I not only need to update my system, but I'd like to do some online stuff :P

@sigma8
I can't possibly imagine any scenario where a bunch of pirates would steal more money than Sony makes across its entire PSN service in one day. Like I said, part of the reason why they're taking so long is because they're killing two birds with one stone: get rid of this security flaw and make the system more robust. I have no idea why you would think PSN "isn't making them a whole lot".

@PointlessPuppies
"I can't possibly imagine any scenario where a bunch of pirates would steal more money than Sony makes across its entire PSN service in one day."

Then read this and stretch your imagination:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/12/24/sonys-hirai-playstation-network-not-yet-profitable/

@sigma8 Your iTunes argument makes no sense at all. If a dam has a small hole in it and only a tiny stream of water is coming through, does that mean it's something you shouldn't worry about? Eventually the tiny hole will become a gap and the whole dam will come crashing down. Sony is protecting their business.

The hackers, for now, have only been able to trick the system into allowing them to download free PSN content, which is a content that costs companies and developers millions in developing cost. Publishers will lose money, then the developers will not create any more content, Sony will lose all the partnerships it has with the content providers, and finally all us consumers will lose on all those great and creative, but expensive to develop games we love so much.

Do you honestly believe hackers are only going to stop here? They're gonna keep trying to bring that dam down.