Sony Settles Out of Court with PS3 Hacker Geohot

[adamboy64]

[citation][nom]bison88[/nom]Hopefully by Sony "Settled out of court" they meant they offered Geohot a much deserved job.[/citation]
Yes, or an epic settlement of cash.
A job would be the better scenario though.

 

[warmon6]

[citation][nom]jcb82[/nom]How do these kids develop the know how to go about hacking complicated pieces of hardware like the PS3. Did his parents only allow him to read computer science textbooks from birth? How do these people get around to doing these things? Its just like that kid from Iceland or wherever who at 17 years old was able to hack DVD protection.[/citation]

Well, thats like asking how can some kids/people fix/build cars, build/fix computers, be able to look at the stars and instantly tell you which stars are apart of what group (say little dipper), ect?

Talents, people brains are hardwired slightly differently so being able to understand one thing (say cracking a PS3 or DVD protection) can be easies to some users while others (say you for example) could find a task difficult.

For me, i have some people amazed (and certainly at my school) with my computer knowledge and able to learn software in a flash.

I can typically find issues with a computer very quickly (whether there hardware or software related) and fix them.

As for software, before the the 10-11 school year started, i had no knowledge of how to use Autocad. although the very first moment my teacher showed me how use autocad to make drawings and said to make the same drawing, I've been able to repeat everything he does with very little messing up. As for other students, some of them still struggle with the basics (that we learned in 1st Q) even though were making 3D solid objects. As of late, my teacher been calling me up to help other students even if im not done with my own drawing (that shows he knows your able to complete the drawing).

Last, I've had both my math teacher and my autocad teacher impressed and thankful for my ability for putting programs (for math it's a TI-83 or 84 debugger caculator and for Autocad is the Autocad 2011) on the school netbooks that students have. Now, the school district has technically blocked installation of unauthorized software via preventing direct usage of the local harddrive (it boots off it and loads programs from the disk but if your trying to look in it though say my computer or most program installers, you cant see it). Although some can see it and if you know the folder routes of windows, it's easy to install stuff.

For me, all i had to do is install the program in the Start menu area (that the account it on) and make a folder to put it in. So that i can load up the program every time instead of loading it (if possible) via a file that on a external storage drive.

if you had people at my school try to do what i do/done, most would not be able to do it.

Now, if you said fix a spark plug in a car to me, well.......... you better have a spare car for your self as i dont know much about a car in terms of fixing it with the right parts. I know them but i couldn't tell you the difference in different spark plugs. (Kinda like how most people cant tell the different between different cpu's if there just looking at it directly)


Sorry for the long comment but all im just trying to say is people think differently thus doing certain stuff can come easier than others. Hope this helps.

 

[web11]

I just jailbroke my PS3 today but I didn't use geohot CFW, I used kmeaw instead.

 

[Blessedman]

[citation][nom]itchyisvegeta[/nom]The smart thing for Sony to do now, is to offer this kid a job in helping to develop the next Playstation.[/citation]

exactly what I think part of the settlement was

 

[Blessedman]

it should have been a freaking contest, hack the ps3 and win a job at Sony. Or post results and see how fast our legal team climbs up your arse

 

[Guest]

You are silly if you think they hired him. That's not how this works. Sony did it for the PR and then paid the kid off. Probably just enough to pay his lawyers and buy a Porsche. GG.

 

[bin1127]

[citation][nom]tburns1[/nom]Is that a picture of him? He looks like we just caught him hacking. Or he's stoned. Probably stoned.[/citation]

was yanking his flute but found out his webcam was on.

 

[TheWhiteRose000]

I knew this would happen.
Sony In-cured Anonymous wrath.

Sony would lose more money if Anonymous attacked then they would gain from suing a Youth.
But to save face on this, Sony settled thing's out of court.

Cause I bet 10-1 if they took it to court they would be losing millions and millions of dollars from constant DDOS attacks.

 

[alidan]

lol

if i was him, and sony told me they were willing to settle, i would have said just one line, 100mill, and told them to shut the fuck up if the answer wasnt allong the lines of "we are may have to nagotiate the amount but that may be possible"

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]Riley Russel[/nom]to protect our intellectual property and our consumer[/citation]
Rather to protect the interlectual property from the customers

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]jonyah[/nom]So, I wonder how much they paid him?[/citation]
Probably $200,000 a year and a corner office in the R&D department.
A job with any tech firm anywhere beckons.

 

[guardianangel42]

[citation][nom]TheWhiteRose000[/nom]I knew this would happen.Sony In-cured Anonymous wrath.Sony would lose more money if Anonymous attacked then they would gain from suing a Youth.But to save face on this, Sony settled thing's out of court.Cause I bet 10-1 if they took it to court they would be losing millions and millions of dollars from constant DDOS attacks.[/citation]

The article said they reached a settlement on March 31. Anonymous attacked them in early April.

 

[virtualban]

[citation][nom]RealityLanding[/nom]You are silly if you think they hired him. That's not how this works. Sony did it for the PR and then paid the kid off. Probably just enough to pay his lawyers and buy a Porsche. GG.[/citation]
And the injunction mentioned in the article is "to never speak of our deal to anyone".

 

[CyberAngel]

I remember hacking early AmigaDOS programs - all of them (which I found interesting)
The very best that I seemed to use frequently I bought even though money was tight
Fortunately enough Finnish law allowed any using for personal usage (not for business) so I did not break any laws. I could have even skipped paying for the good+everyday programs.
Anyway I treated everythibg as sharewere. When law changed I was very careful not to do it again. BUT
if I needed for some reason to hack any HW I own, I'd do it and that's it.
That includes not just consoles, but any embedded CPU
Naturally I build my own PC from components designing the airflow and experimenting with it.
What comes to stealing games it's complicated, but when the law says NO, I think it's NO
but I don't believe that revenues would grow with ultimate (c) protection
Those who have money buy games, I can't afford them anymore

Sony, Nintendo, MS, they are not nice companies, they want money, don't believe them
BUT
also they have entertaining products, buy, if you enjoy the products
AND
hack if you dare, prison will happen and it's not nice, not nice at all...

 

[bill gates is your daddy]

[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]Unless the settlement is only the injunction and there was no cash payment for Sony, this is a poor move for Hotz. If Sony is backing up at all, it's because they could have lost, and a loss with a case like this is the worst case for them. It would set precedent that modifying a console is acceptable. They have no problem taking people to court and paying the legal fees if they win, so clearly they did not anticipate a win and offered a settlement to get out.[/citation]

Exactly what I was getting out of this as well. There is no way sony would have back down on this. Look at their massive temper tantrum they have thrown from the start. Now all the sudden they just want to settle this behind a closed door and ignore it like it never happened?

They knew that in the end they were going to lose the case. By ending it this way Hotz is still the bad guy, sony is still the company that was wronged but were compassionate enough to not ruin a young mans life. What a pile of flaming douchbags.

Truth is, sony was going to lose no matter how much money and time was thrown at this case. They were probably told by the judge that this was going to happen. Hotz wins, gets all his stuff back and he starts posting all his findings again and will probably end up blowing the PS3 out of the water for a second time.

 

[virtualban]

[citation][nom]bill gates is your daddy[/nom]Exactly what I was getting out of this as well. There is no way sony would have back down on this. Look at their massive temper tantrum they have thrown from the start. Now all the sudden they just want to settle this behind a closed door and ignore it like it never happened?They knew that in the end they were going to lose the case. By ending it this way Hotz is still the bad guy, sony is still the company that was wronged but were compassionate enough to not ruin a young mans life. What a pile of flaming douchbags.Truth is, sony was going to lose no matter how much money and time was thrown at this case. They were probably told by the judge that this was going to happen. Hotz wins, gets all his stuff back and he starts posting all his findings again and will probably end up blowing the PS3 out of the water for a second time.[/citation]
Sony had a percentage chance to win, and make another example of greedy company against individual. Sony might chose to risk it even if the odds were discouraging (am not saying they were or were not, IMO Sony would loose this if they kept going), but, it's not just Sony on the line here. If Geohot won, it would set a big precedent for many similar cases in the future, for many types of "I own the device, I do as I please with it". Which makes me believe that Geohot got more than Sony's bribe to keep shut.

 

[BulkZerker]

Sony's bribe? Seriously? He's pissed about this settlement enough to boycott them publicly (unless they REALLY paid him off and told him to do such, which I'm doubting, these are lawyers, not people who are good at being deceitful) so I'm doubting he got more than a PSN giftcard.

He's not allowed to touch another PS3, letalone another Sony gaming device without being fined between 10-250K each time. He LOST this case as far as I'm concerned, that is, untill someone is willing to do all the physical contact for him upon said machines.

 

[Zingam]

Can somebody tell me how did he do that crack? I'm not interested in cracking a PS3.
I'm interested how is it possible for such young guy to do it? Aren't modern consoles way to complex to understand and mod?
I'm very curious what qualifications should a person have to be able to crack a PS3 if Sony's security team wasn't able to do a proper protection. I guess Sony's own engineers weren't able to crack it themselves.

 

[captaincharisma]

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Probably $200,000 a year and a corner office in the R&D department.A job with any tech firm anywhere beckons.[/citation]

i wonder which one of Kevin Butler's job titles they gave him

 

[Guest]

@Zingam

consoles by their nature can not generate software on their own, nearly all software titles start off on a PC somewhere and then gets ported over to a 'development' machine, which is more or less identical to a production console. Developer kits also have extensive documentation and support (which gets leaked) on methods, calls and procedures, in some case at the hardware level

with access to the developer kit and information a smart enough person should be able to reverse engineer an exploit