Cell's Security Architecture: Ibm's Prize And Sony's Achilles Heel

[Carl B]

Hannibal's been off his game for a couple of years now, and this article isn't doing anything to get him back on track. I mean we're talking about a pretty damn secure feature here, and granted no defense is impregnable forever, but this is taking it up a notch. Didn't we in fact know Cell would allow for this sort of execution environment for a couple of years now? I swear it was in one of the white papers or patent or something...

Anyway between the 'SPV,' signed code, soft updates via the net, and possible firmware updates if BD+ is implemented on the system (via BD movies as well?) - and frankly Blu-ray itself is a wall to begin with - I think that cracking PS3 is going to be quite the effort.

 

[PS3iscrap]

Would you PS3 maroons STOP attacking the messenger?

Attack the message. Oh wait, you dont have a fucking clue about the issues presented so you cant.

If I was mod, and I saw one message to the effect "yeah well, Arstencinca is teh stupid!!111" (aka most of the messages in this thread) from the Sony hordes, who dont know a CPU from the back of their ass most of them, I'd ban on site.

Do your jobs, mods. Oh wait, you're all in Sony's pocket too. Never mind.

 

[scificube]

PS3 goons? Hardly....and no one is under attack here. The article is, and if you put out an article you should expect people to critique your work.

 

[MfA]

Replying to PS3iscrap seems a bit futile ... it's not like he believes what he writes.

 

[Pete]

Whatever one thinks of Hannibal's modus operandi, it's still not cool to post an entire article--and this is analysis (overly dramatic or not), not just news--without even bothering to supply a link.

Not to mention wholesale quoting is against the forum rules.

I can appreciate not wanting to use the quote function b/c I can't stand reading italics, but you've got to do more than just post as if this were your own writing. The source and link should be at the top of the post if you're not using quote tags or even characters.

Edit: Thanks, Vy. I posted in case hey69 got here first, as he could just edit it himself. But it's obviously a pet peeve of mine. Somewhat ironic, considering my attitude towards, say, viewing the Red Steel scans.

 

[Farid]

Whatever one thinks of Hannibal's modus operandi, it's still not cool to post an entire article--and this is analysis (overly dramatic or not), not just news--without even bothering to supply a link.

Not to mention wholesale quoting is against the forum rules.

True, I didn't even took the time to check if it was the complete article or not. My bad.

I edited the first post, now.

 

[SPM]

If you ask me, the author is talking out of his Ars Technica.

Even if the key is known, which would require Sony to leak it, how on earth do you mod chip the PS3 DRM if the hardware key is incorporated in the Cell chip itself? I mean what exactly is the mod chipper supposed to do? Order a specially manufactured chip modded Cell chips from the foundry? Even if the foundry was agreeable to this, and the chip modder had the millions of dollars required to order the quantities required for a special production run, I am sure the foundry's licensing agreements for Cell with Sony has clauses which prohibit this.

 

[MfA]

Well if you know the keys used to sign discs piracy becomes a whole lot easier, no modding required ... just rip the game and change the media id it is allowed to run from and sign it again. Im going to assume they use PKC for such purposes though (in this day and age why wouldn't you?). So you would be right, Sony would have to leak. Such leaks didn't happen this gen, and they almost certainly won't happen next gen either.

 

[SPM]

Well if you know the keys used to sign discs piracy becomes a whole lot easier, no modding required ... just rip the game and change the media id it is allowed to run from and sign it again. Im going to assume they use PKC for such purposes though (in this day and age why wouldn't you?). So you would be right, Sony would have to leak. Such leaks didn't happen this gen, and they almost certainly won't happen next gen either.

DRM does nothing to prevent piracy at all anyway, and it never will. This is something that a lot of people don't understand because of misinformation put out by the MPAA and RIAA. DRM (more accurately known as Digital Restrictions Management) = playback restriction NOT copy protection. A perfect pirate copy of a disk is an exact copy of the disc including the DRM protection made by a bulk copier in China or someplace like that. DRM can only ever hope to prevent PS3 discs from running on non-Sony hardware. If you can't run official PS3 disks on a modded machine because of DMCA law and the key in the hardware, and the modded machine costs more than the PS3 because of the absense of Sony subsidies on the console, then I wonder how big the market for it will be.