SONY surfs on a PS3 patch wave?

***wraggster*** · July 5th, 2009, 19:19

In the last weeks I noticed that many new not announced patches came with the PS3 firmwares. I will list a few:

FW Bypass Hack

You could bypass the firmware requests so you could still go online in the PlayStation Network with an old firmware. This was done by setting up a fake updatelist, which was a modified original. Then you repointed the original URL to the list via DNS or proxy to your fake updatelist. PATCHED

Open Remote Play

This hack by dashhacker allowed you to use the PS3's "PSP remote play" feature on a PC. PATCHED

DRMDIR

DRMDIR is a folder created in game folder next to USRDIR and TROPDIR. It is added by the firmware every time you install a game or patch. It is used by PSN games aswell as for disc games. The use seems to be, that it checks if the files in the game/patch folders are modified. If so, the game won't start anymore. The DRMDIR may create a hash or similar of the most vulnerable files like the game's EBOOT.BIN.

So what do we have to expect next? As the HDD decryption tools are now public maybe a new encryption? Well, I have to agree that would be unlikely but SONY is known for surprises. Key per sector encryption would fix it for sure but it would make the PS3 slower than ever...