CS.RIN.RU - Steam Underground Community

Well, finally, looks like someone came up with a method and published it while the forums were down.
Some Australian reseller dude and someone from hong kong, managed to hack together this dongle that allows you to play PS3 backups from an external HDD, as well backing up existing games and running Homebrew. The Dongle is now sold for about $120 on the reseller's site and is claimed to work on every PS3 model up to firmware version 3.41.

I was (and still am) quite skeptical about this, but now lots of the PS3 scene seems to trust this method.
Here are some articles about it:

http://kotaku.com/5616952/working-plays ... ailer-says
http://www.destructoid.com/ps-jailbreak ... 1848.phtml

French third party review:
http://www.logic-sunrise.com/news-12532 ... arche.html

From what the reseller claims to think, this dongle seems to make the ps3 act like a Debug console (aka Dev mode), therefore giving it the ability to run unsigned code.
Now from what i understood, in order to do that, you either need to find some fancy exploit that triggers the "Debug mode" or use a hardware solution like this "Modchip" that's basically a clone of some internal hardware from Sony. The tool that backs up the games was found to be a wildly available tool that's part of the PS3 SDK which was leaked some time ago.

What i find interesting to me is what exactly is this dongle and how exactly does it work? is it really a fancy modchip or just an overpriced USB flash drive with an exploit on it?

What do you guys think?

_________________

I say it's a hoax. Just get a bunch of Flash drives, claim it works on copied disks, then sell a bunch and make profit.

_________________
The phrase "Login to http://www.clue.org and issue the GET command" springs to mind...

I moderated this forum.

I'm still not convinced. I'll be watching this topic though.

Here are some more articles i didn't manage to post yesterday due to high traffic on the sites:

http://www.ps3news.com/PS3-Hacks/psjail ... s-arrives/
http://www.ps3news.com/PS3-Hacks/ps-jai ... ew-videos/
http://www.ps3-hacks.com/2010/08/19/usb ... p-for-ps3/

Also there's these two guys that want to reverse engineer this thing, one of them already got a hold of a dongle (apperantly):
http://twitter.com/RichDevX
http://twitter.com/Mathieulh

Even BBC covered this, even though i don't think they mention anything usefull or tell us anything new:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11035928

There's also this new video i just found from another third party reseller:

_________________

So the way I see it, you still need to have an original disc inserted. Even if it is "any" original disc, it is still original disc. If you don't have any original disc, you can't start the game from backup either. And that quick eject after power on. This looks like one of the first iPhone jailbreak methods :]

We will see what this will bring in the future.

Much simpler shit, that's what it will bring.
Pandora's box has been opened, why do you even wonder what will happen.
It's written on the wall.
Ps3 has been raped finally after 4 long fucking years

_________________

Finally, here's some photos of this dongle from the inside:
http://www.planetadejuego.com/psjailbre ... hip-de-ps3

Looks like a regular USB flash drive with LEDs hooked to it to me, but maybe i'm wrong.
Also i read on some guys Twitter that this thing might be doing some sort of patching on level 2 of PS3s bootup, hopefully someone manages to reverse engineer this thing anytime soon.

And i had this thought, this thing basically enables anyone to install Homebrew applications without any virtualization environment (eg. like the "Other OS" thing), which means this can potentially turn the PS3 into what the old Xbox used to be.. i wonder how's Sony doing right now. How about you guys, any thoughts so far?

Oh and there's yet another video of this dongle at work:

_________________

It's not impossible that this could work, but I wouldn't pay $120 for an USB stick that uses some exploit which could be fixed in the next firmware release already.

_________________
Game Industry Guardian (1K+).

Can't someone just copy the contents of that dongle to another USB flash drive and create your own jailbreak? Just asking for academic reasons.

Read the articles guys, according to one of them, nobody is sure what the dongle is.
It can be a USB flash drive with an exploit on it, but it might be a fancy "Modchip" that only looks like a flash drive too.
One of the articles even says that when connecting the dongle to a computer, windows doesn't recognize it. However, it was only a brief trial without any serious attempt to access the device.

So either way, what is it exactly or if it's possible to clone, is not determined yet. We can only speculate right now.

_________________

NightArck
Happy 600 post!
If this works,PSJailBreak has right,this will help Sony,the PS3 sales will increase,I will buy a PS3 only to hack it

-- Edit --

"Here's how it might have been done: debug PS3 systems have "BD emulators" that allow code from connected hard drives to run as Blu-ray disc games. You can see the relevant menu options in the below pictures."
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/08/19/usb-m ... il-backups

_________________
If you have any new game acf's (with depotcache's), ncf's or gcf's, PM me !
My best post
We evolved from smart users with dumb terminals to dumb users with smart terminals.
I need updates for the following :

I've seen that one too, the people who made the videos claim they used a Retail PS3 and "Turned it" into a debug PS3 using the dongle, others say the guys in the videos used a Debug PS3 in first place.
Some of the hacking groups for the PS3 claim the dongle is a "jig" that Sony uses internally for PS3 maintenance (which sounds logical), but nobody manged to reverse the dongle yet (or at least didn't show up yet).

p.s
Thanks for the Post thing, but honestly dude, i never gave two shits about my post count. So please, keep it in the spam thread?

_________________

I'd doubt that. If Sony was using such dongles for maintenance, then they're certainly using digital certificates ( just as for the rest of the update system ), which you cannot fake for obvious reasons. Might be he acquired a single certificate, though unlikely.

_________________
Game Industry Guardian (1K+).

Maybe those guys from hong kong who got a hold of one of the original dongle managed to use their only certificate to reverse engineer the device, then clone it and send it to the distributer?
Or what if they actually went further and managed to either smuggle or acquire the schematics and software for the dongle from an internal source somehow? (which i somewhat doubt, but it still can be a possibility).

_________________

Happy 2009 registration!
If this works, I doubt PS3 sales will increase and I don't understand where do you get your "certain" infos about marketing share and internal operations at sony.
Maybe you wish to enlighten us too because otherwise I don't understand why sony themselves haven't "leaked" such a mod chip if it was going to help their sales so much?

_________________