Bunnie, the original hacker of the first Xbox, was brought on as council by Microsoft to help improve security for the Xbox 360. You can see the results if you ever get deep into the security models of the two.
I'm not so sure I'd want to take a job having just made my new chain of command look like incompetent idiots, they'd probably find a way to repay the favor. They'd just make him to sign a bunch of long-term NDAs and fire him 6 months later. If this guy had much experience in the workplace he'd know that development like this usually happens when an organization has systematically driven out the detail-oriented security-minded people. They tend to be on the low end of the "net reduction in buglist items per salary dollar" scale.
On the other hand, there are any number of independent security assessment/pen testing firms that would love to have this guy's skills. He might even end up working on consoles. That's probably the way he should approach it.
I'm not so sure I'd want to take a job having just made my new chain of command look like incompetent idiots
A chain of command that's savvy enough to really want him despite that is one you'd actually want to be in, though. An organization that focused on results would be all edge like the fictional Maas Neotek from Gibson's Neuromancer.
A chain of command that's savvy enough to really want him despite that is one you'd actually want to be in, though.
Absolutely. But if they were the savvy type, would they have been pwned at nearly every security layer like that? If you haven't seen it, the video says it better than I can.
So probably if he were hired, it would be with mixed feelings of some of his uppers. At best, he probably "wouldn't fit in with the team" as they say. Someone like him would need to be either in charge of the whole freaking platform direction, or not there at all. (now there's an idea) Seriously, IMHO Sony's best move would be to fire the guy responsible for reneging on Linux and hire someone with a clue instead. Microsoft would have the guts do something like that.
It's ridiculous. I bought a PS3 (by coincidence) the other day. Guess what?! It doesn't play PS2 games! PS2 plays PS1 games (so I thought). Our Wii plays GameCube games. Xbox360 plays Xbox games. What is a PS3 if not a PlayStation? I didn't have my heart set on it anyway, but the kids tracked down some PS2 games they wanted. They specifically wanted the older PS2 versions because they didn't like the PS3 versions!
In fairness, Gran Turismo 5 and Little Big Planet are beautiful and fun games and they have only crashed a few times.
This is true-the parent should also bear in mind that not every single Xbox game is supported on the 360. They gave up on trying to be backwards compatible about 2.5 years in, or so.
Thanks for the info. Clearly we have to read the fine print rather than relying on product names.
Congrats Sony, you thought you'd force your customers to repurchase their favorite games didn't you? Instead you made enemies of an upcoming generation of gamers.
If only they could have heard the tears of the small children on Christmas morning upon finding out that they would not, in fact, be able to use the dance pad and the older Dance Dance Revolution which had the actual anime songs that they had saved their allowance to buy and they would only be able to dance to Lady Gaga instead...
The backwards-compatibility with PS2 games was facilitated by the presence of the PS2 CPU and GPU in the PS3 hardware. Newer revisions of the system eliminated first the CPU and then the GPU. I think it's fair to assume this was done for cost reasons -- it's not like they removed the functionality through software update.
If you really want to play PS2 games, buy a used PS2 on Craigslist for a fraction of the cost of a PS3. Heck, you can still get them new.
The backwards-compatibility with PS2 games was facilitated by the presence of the PS2 CPU and GPU in the PS3 hardware. Newer revisions of the system eliminated first the CPU and then the GPU.
Then they ought to stop selling it as a "PlayStation 3" once it no longer performs the functions of a "PlayStation 3". Call it a "Playstation 3--" or something.
Product model names invoke the very definition of what the product is and does, particularly when the name includes a number. They aren't just attractive words to be chosen by Marketing, even when it was the same company that made the initial definition of the feature set in the first place.
Like I said, it wasn't particularly frustrating or surprising to me to find this out after I bought it, but only because my expectations of a Sony product were so low to begin with. I would have been shocked if this had been Google though.
Backward compatibility of gaming systems, in my estimation, started with Sony. Nintendo and Sega certainly didn't have them on their systems, and Sony was the first to do it(again, AFAIK) with the Playstation 2. Gamecubes didn't play N64 games which didn't play SNES games which didn't play NES games, etc.. However, the PS2 accomplished that by having a PS1 core on the same board as the PS2 hardware-whenever a gamer inserted a PS1 disc, it would switch to the old core... which is why they ran perfectly but with no enhancements from the PS2 hardware.
Getting to the point, the PS3's with the PS2 core were dropped not long after release due to their high cost. I understand your frustration, but it's becoming increasingly important to do research and understand each system's capabilities before putting your dollars down... the 360 is no exception here either.
But if they were the savvy type, would they have been pwned at nearly every security layer like that?
True. If I were him, I'd try working at Apple. Also, "they" are not monolithic. It's quite possible that the parties they beat would not be in his chain of command. One would have to do some diligent research before taking that job. It might well be worth it, however.
Contract employees are paid to perform specific services as laid out by, well, their contract. This makes them a lot less beholden to management than their full time equivalents. The most vindictive thing management could do is to not hire GeoHot in the first place, which would be their loss really.
Really not that brilliant. It appears that the fail0verflow guys did all of the work here. He just beat them to the punch after taking the fruits of their labor, and dropped the key using their exploit.
This is not unlike his behavior that got him rejected in the iPhone scene. I am actually a bit surprised that there are so many comments here praising him.
Hiring the fail0verflow guys, on the other hand, would be a good move.
There is a reason that he never releases technical details and just comes out of nowhere.
No, this is different. geohot compromised metldr, fail0verflow did the other loaders. geohot's exploit is different, no one but himself knows how he did it (not even fail0verflow).
No, the only thing that wasn't known was how he dumped metldr. This is a relatively insignificant part of the whole thing and wasn't what fail0verflow was focusing on in their research (as seen in the video).
The only reason that he was able to do anything with his dump was because of all of fail0verflow's work. See the twitter feed of marcan42 for clarification.
Actually, since the beginning, geohot's ps3 trick was just him copying what fail0verflow had done on the wii (glitching the address bus). He didn't give them credit for that either.
They don't need security; they can just throw you in jail indefinitely, eventually give you a "trial" where some military types say they can execute you, and then execute you. BAI!
It's the phone manufacturers that have to use cryptography to prevent you from actually enjoying a device you just paid them $600 for, since they can't legally kill you if you do something they don't like.
Didn't this happen with their last round of consoles, and didn't they hire the people that did this last time around? I recall something about this from that case with the guy who was chipping in CA a few weeks ago.
I would take the mans word and hire him. I'd even through Apple into his list, he did after all release jailbreaks for the iPhone too.