- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
On their web sites, George Hotz, who became known for his iPhone and PS3 hacks, and the fail0verflow hacker group, have published three statements of complaint made by legal representatives of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) against Hotz and four alleged members of fail0verflow at the District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. In their motion, Sony's legal team accuse the hackers of having successfully bypassed the PlayStation 3's copy protection and of having released various software tools and the "metldr root key".
This apparently allows unauthorised parties to decompile, modify and renew the signature of the PS3's firmware. It allegedly also allows any type of software to be signed for non-modified PS3 consoles, which causes this software to be recognised as legal and enables it to be played back on such consoles. The first PS3 games that were copied illegally, based on the hack, have allegedly already appeared and are circulating. The motion says that this has caused SCEA considerable economic damage and loss, although no figure was stipulated.
While the members of fail0verflow didn't directly publish the security key, they were accused of releasing detailed instructions on how to extract the key at the latest congress of the Chaos Computer Club, recently held in Berlin (video footage). This information and further conversations with the hackers allegedly enabled Hotz to extract the metldr root key and publish it on his web site. The hackers reportedly also shared their information via such services as YouTube and Twitter. According to Sony's motion, this constitutes a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
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This apparently allows unauthorised parties to decompile, modify and renew the signature of the PS3's firmware. It allegedly also allows any type of software to be signed for non-modified PS3 consoles, which causes this software to be recognised as legal and enables it to be played back on such consoles. The first PS3 games that were copied illegally, based on the hack, have allegedly already appeared and are circulating. The motion says that this has caused SCEA considerable economic damage and loss, although no figure was stipulated.
While the members of fail0verflow didn't directly publish the security key, they were accused of releasing detailed instructions on how to extract the key at the latest congress of the Chaos Computer Club, recently held in Berlin (video footage). This information and further conversations with the hackers allegedly enabled Hotz to extract the metldr root key and publish it on his web site. The hackers reportedly also shared their information via such services as YouTube and Twitter. According to Sony's motion, this constitutes a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
Read more
