PS3 Hacks Force Infinity Ward to Rethink Game Security

[CarbonX13]

Meh, I never liked Modern Warfare 2 anyways. I'm just worried Black Ops online will turn into more of a hellhole that it is on the PS3 already.

 

[Tux']

Tried playing Modern Warfare 2 on Sunday for a few hours with friends, ran into hackers in every lobby. It was ridiculous. What's kind of funny though is that on the microphone, they sound like twelve year olds threatening to demote your level, it's funny, but annoying as hell too due to the fact you spawn and die instantly.

 

[SPH73]

Devs are all freaking out.

Its PSP all over again.

Developer exodus has begun.

 

[Maplemage]

Once a hacker joined a room and unlocked everyones challanges and got everyone to Prestige :/ my bro had like rank 13.

 

[XXLANCEXX]

Thats why I only play online with my 360 ;0

...


The 360's been hacked ages ago. You can find JTAGers online to this day.

No, Jtag'ers are banned with in 5 minutes of going on live. The chance of finding a person on Black ops hacking is like 1 and 1,000,000.

yeah and you forgot JTAGers can spoof theyre 360 and unban themselves in a flash

 

[Splych]

ugh , it goes to show not everything is unhackable . Sony held together for years , but now , it seems like their console is collapsing . although all this is happening , i am still interested in buying a PS3 for RPGs and possibly CoD . maybe one day , Sony will start charging online for PS3 just because of this . then after they can employ more secure FW and security measures especially in games .

 

[Canonbeat234]

Even more bullshit. I go on the IW forums, they say complain to Sony, there is nothing they can do. I complain to Sony, they say complain to Activision. Fuck that.

Sony has recently acknowledged a breach in security on the PS3 which resulted in games to become exposed to exploits and hacks. 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.
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.
If you are concerned about playing with players who are hacking, I encourage you to play exclusively with friends by utilizing the party or private match options in Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4 to avoid such players as much as possible until this issue is resolved by Sony.
At this time, we do not have the ability to restore or adjust individual stats.
SonyThank You
Your complaint has been submitted.
Please contact Activision regarding this issue.
Due to PLAYSTATION®Network policy, SCEA does not disclose to individual users the status or results of individual complaints.

ARRGGHHH.

I lol'd, this reminds of what happens during court cases when the victim blames the incident on something else.

On-Topic: So will this mean that Sony now has to revamp the PS3 from the inside out?

 

[CarbonX13]

ugh , it goes to show not everything is unhackable . Sony held together for years , but now , it seems like their console is collapsing . although all this is happening , i am still interested in buying a PS3 for RPGs and possibly CoD . maybe one day , Sony will start charging online for PS3 just because of this . then after they can employ more secure FW and security measures especially in games .

I don't see how charging for online will do anything. It'll just take away possibly the one and only significant benefit of the PlayStation Network over Xbox Live.

 

[purplesludge]

ugh , it goes to show not everything is unhackable . Sony held together for years , but now , it seems like their console is collapsing . although all this is happening , i am still interested in buying a PS3 for RPGs and possibly CoD . maybe one day , Sony will start charging online for PS3 just because of this . then after they can employ more secure FW and security measures especially in games .

I don't see how charging for online will do anything. It'll just take away possibly the one and only significant benefit of the PlayStation Network over Xbox Live.

Charging for online will give people something to lose when banned. They would have to pay for a new subsciption plus lose any time left on their old one.

 

[FAST6191]

Re JTAG yeah it is quick but unbanning takes a resource beyond a bit of time and minor skills- you need a valid keyvault and they are like any other limited resource- you can buy and sell keyvaults. Equally nowadays there are system link options for JTAG machines.

"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"

I call BS- the PC is an entirely hostile platform and online games seem to just about get along there. Unless I am mistaken Sony also knows this and implemented rudimentary LV2 hash checks in the 3.5 update where there were none before.

Equally there are entire cheating guides devoted to working around developers tricks- even us plebs on the DS face such things-
encrypted values, mirrored values, shifted values, false values, pointers, negative branching (lost all ammo for a messed up cheat for example), subtle effects (phantasy star on the DS had differing drop rates).......

You tie this into a system that can see itself updated (if I am not mistaken you need the latest game updates to play online or at least against the masses) and you present a moving target for hackers. You combine this with even rudimentary statistical analysis- say issue 5 different game updates (you probably already have different regions and even them sometimes different subregions- US Canada border and nearby states have been known to have different games to US- Mexico border and nearby states). By and large hackers target one item at a time and if all of a sudden a massive amount of people are using update 3 then you blacklist 3 (you might have to spew the "background improvements" line in a changelog but that is nothing new) and get it to repeat all over again. I admit this last option may clash with existing implementations of the network/protocol so magic bullet it might not be but the point however is that it is possible.
Granted for updates to legacy stuff it means actual effort/new code but hey PR is expensive.

I know I can dream but less BS next time please.

 

[Splych]

FAST6191 , you know a LOT . do you happen to do a lot of research on hacking or aspects in creating a game ? also , does what you know here also relate to your Uni/College in anyway

?

 

[ehayes427]

yeah i was playing modern warfare 2 today on ps3,
and a bunch of advertisements popped up, and the game was ended for security reasons.

 

[FAST6191]

University..... those days have long since passed.

Related..... not really/possibly- I mainly pull apart programs/code because it is cheap and easy to get the gear to do it (whether it actually turns out to be easy is a different matter) unlike pulling apart real things for which equipment gets very expensive and awkward to manage/maintain/use very fast especially if you are just doing it for fun.