When fail0verflow and George “GeoHot” Hotz released the PS3 security keys a couple of weeks back, their intention was to reinstate Linux functionality on the console, as well as support for homebrew applications. Dubious legalities aside for the moment, their purposes were noble enough.
Of course, it hasn’t taken long for less noble people to use the hack to their own rather more nefarious ends. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling has addressed the issue of in-game hacking in Modern Warfare 2 on the company’s forums, acknowledging that it has now become a problem.
“Modern Warfare 2 is no exception to this security exploit and we understand that some of you have experienced problems with stats and other issues associated with this,” he writes. “Games rely on the security of the encryption on the platforms they’re played on, therefore; updates to the game through patches will not resolve this problem, unless the security exploit itself is resolved on the platform. Regretfully, Call of Duty games are receiving the bulk of the hacker’s attention, due to its high player counts and popularity. However, the number of legitimate players severely outweighs the bad apples.”
He suggests that players concerned about this stick to gaming with trusted friends for the time being, or until “this issue is resolved by Sony”.
How Sony is going to resolve the matter is anybody’s guess just now. While they’ve claimed they’ll be fixing the console’s compromised security “through network updates”, the hackers responsible say this isn’t possible.
Maybe it’s time Sony reconsidered their policies about this sort of stuff. When Modern Warfare 2 was first released, a number of high profile exploits in the launch version prompted Microsoft to ban cheating players from Xbox LIVE – while Sony refused to do anything about it.
Discuss the PS3 jailbreak in the forums
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