Over the weekend news emerged of a breakthrough in hacker circles regarding the Sony PlayStation 3, long considered hack proof.

In particular a technique using a specially constructed USB dongle enabled the backing up and playing of games (not blu-ray movies or other media) off the PS3s internal or an USB attached external hard drive.

Once hacked, the PS3 is fooled into believing a game is being played from a legitimate Blu-ray disc rather than off the HDD. The PS3 is also enabled to run non Sony sanctioned applications such as home-brew written software.

iTWire has had confirmation of the procedures success. There are a few caveats, including the requirement to have any other PS3 game disc in the drive at the time and also the limitation of external hard drives only working if all files are under 4GB in size.

Talking to the company involved OzModChips has revealed that directors have taken out extensions on their mortgages to invest in the idea, and that over 500 of the USBs had already been pre-ordered at AU$170 each.

At this point the fun rumour and speculation kicks in. Firstly hackers suggest it wont be long before a dump or the PS Jailbreak software will lead to a free version of the technique being available. Perhaps this is why the manager at OzModChips walks with the USB dongle on his person at all times.


Secondly, PS3hax.net site believes that use of PS Jailbreak will be detectable by Sony when the hacked console goes online to the PlayStation Network. Once detected, Sony could wield the infamous banhammer cancelling PSN accounts or worse.

More fantastical rumours involve Sony deciding to remove USB functionality during the next firmware upgrade, that particular rumour made me laugh. In particular the mythical Sony comment regarding firmware upgrade 3.42 In addition disabling the USB ports will help ensure that PS3 owners will continue to have access to the broad range of gaming and entertainment content from SCE and its content partners on a more secure system.

Whoever came up with the stupid rumor of Sony disabling usb ports should seriously kill themselves. And to all who think Sony would do that, please kill yourself also. That is probably the most idiotic statement I've ever heard. It makes zero sense, it would make all Playstation usb accessories useless (camera, keyboards, controllers, steering wheels, etc.)

Well alot of these are just rumors
There are already a bunch of Chinese knock-offs about to hit the market. Plus a bunch of scams will pop up from this. Also if Sony were to do that with another fw update, how would we all charge our controllers? i doubt Sony would or wants to invest in another way to charge controllers or have their consumers buy other ways of charging them. Alot of these rumors make me laugh

Sony has the Australian sellers on lockdown. I don't think they'll disable USB ports that obviously would never happen. If anything they could halt USB activity during bootup since for it to work it needs to be upon power up.