Anonymous Attacks the PSN

Today and Yesterday the PSN has been sporadically not working due to attacks from a group known as anonymous. They are justifying these attacks by saying that Sony's treatment of PS3 hackers and users of modified PS3s is unjust and they simply ask that Sony cancels all charges against the hackers as well as cease finding and attacking more people. They also request that Sony allows users to modify their PS3s freely without fear of being charged. While this might seem like a just cause I doubt Sony will abide to any of these terms and will just wait for these attacks to stop which I believe they will.

Due to Sony's past way of treating people it seems that they will just try to bring members of anonymous to court which probably will not be successful. So at the end of the day this whole attack on Sony will probably be forgotten and the only long term effects that I can see is Sony becoming more aggressive in stopping PS3 hackers. If anonymous can keep up their attacks on Sony for a time period long enough to have an effect which just doesn't seem like it will happen, then Sony might just have a change of heart, but as i said it just doesn't seem like that will be the course of action.

PSN for CFW in the Future?

Just a small update but it has been said that many devs are working on restoring PSN to CFW users. A member from Team Rebug said that Rebug is not working on PSN but many devs are working on it. I personally enjoy being able to use PSN on CFW so I am looking forward to it.

Kmeaw CFW that has Dual Boot for OFW and CFW Coming Soon

This is just a small update but Kmeaw who is known for his custom firmwares and lv2 patcher is planning his own dual boot CFW along with Graf_Chokolo, but Kmeaw's CFW will not be for linux it will allow the ability to switch between OFW GameOS and cfwOS. This is just a small update as Kmeaw only announced he wants to do it but it seems really cool to be able to switch between CFW and OFW.

Graf_Chokolo Publishes Petitboot Tools for Linux

After Graf_Chokolo announced that he successfully installed Gentoo Linux onto his internal hard drive, he said that he would create a petitboot which he did. This petitboot will allow for dual boot of GameOS and Linux which is pretty awesome. To create the petitboot yourself is very involved and waiting for a dual-boot custom firmware seems like the easiest option for most.

A guide for creating a petitboot can be found at here, and it seems very complicated so I will personally wait for a dual-boot custom firmware.

Possibility for 3.60 CFW

Today a hacker by the name of Mathieulh revealed that he has recently exploited and dumped the LV0 on 3.60 firmwares. Mathieulh has been known for not revealing much information about his exploits but this time he has been kind to help some people out. With this a twitter user by the name of Ps3WeOwnYoU has claimed to have reproduces Mathieulh's trick. He says that he has the decrypted LV0 from 3.60 after using this trick, but Ps3WeOwnYoU's claims have not been substantiated and this is still largely a rumor.

Basically this exploit will allow access to the 3.60 keys which will then lead to CFW and homebrew on 3.60. Basically this will allow PSN access once more and make it so games do not have to be patched to run from an outdated firmware.While 3.60 doesn't seem all that necessary it would still be nice and I waiting for some more good news.

Graf_Chokolo

Graf_Chokolo continues his contributions to the PS3 scene now allows for Linux to be installed on the internal hard drive of Slim PS3s. He was able to increase the FLASH region on the PS3s hard drive from 256MB to 40GB, and installed Gentoo Linux to this location. PS3 owners can even have their PlayStations format their hard drives and the Linux will still remain and be usable. Hopefully a version for the Fat PS3 comes out so I can try it out.

Graf_Chokolo's plans for the future just makes things sound even better. These plans are to compile and install (to the vFLASH) petiboot and then after that he plans for the creation of a HV CFW which can also boot GameOS or petitboot which can either boot Linux or GameOS.

Great things will come from Graf_Chokolo's hypervisor and I am exited for the future.

Dragon Age 2 Review

My first review will be on Dragon Age 2 which in my opinion sucked pretty badly being a horribly dumbed down game compared to Dragon Age: Origins

The first aspect of the game I will touch is the new combat system which is actually quite nice and a step forward from Origins. It looks nice and the characters of different attack animations depending on where you are initiating you attack which is kinds cool. The only flaw to the combat system is that you just mash the X button the whole battle which can become annoying.

The Story is terrible I don't even know if I encountered a story and I am at act 2 with around 15 hours put into the game I would expect a story by now. The only thing this game has me doing is collecting money via boring quest and then collecting more money.

The quest I mentioned are incredibly bad and after a few hours I was getting this feeling as if I had been to these places before... which I had because in Dragon Age 2 the creators just kept reusing the same maps and designs for all of the locations. The actual quest are just as bad as where they take place and only involve talking to ALOT of people and then a little fighting at the end after the fighting you get to talk to some more people to finish them.

The characters in this game are mediocre at best and have no development what so ever. In Origins the character development was amazing and there was changes between characters in just idle talk which was humorous and interesting as well as being able to talk to the characters individually. In Dragon Age 2 you barley get to talk to the characters and they all have very uninteresting personalities. The only character that I somewhat liked was Merril with her naive out look but I wish I could talk to her more than they let me. Romance with the characters is barley noticeable and the few times you can use it just appear very strangely in conversation.

The skill system is the only part of the game that benefited from being dumbed down and is very easy to use.

The inventory was decent and with it being organized much better then in origins but the variety in items and armor took a hit. Hawke is the only character who can equip different armor and all the other characters have unchanging armor. It also seems that the weapons have less variety with no difference between choosing a great axe or great sword as long as they are both 2-haned.

The setting of the game sucks with all of the maps and scenery being copied as well as the main portion taking place in one city that you probably have been in 90% of the game being of all the going from person A to B quest in the game.

The last part of the game I would like to address is the dialog system which along with the rest of the game sucks. You only get 3 choices most of the times which are normally always good, humorous (which is a lie), and forceful . The actually conversations are not actually changed by choices as well with normally only a one line response to your choice and then back to being a record player.

At the end of the day I would give this game a 4/10 and suggest that if you are going to buy it have not yet played Origins go buy Origins and don't bother with the sequel.

Blog Update

I think I am going to do posts about actual video games along with my normal posts about whats happening with the PS3 scene. I will probably start reviews soon and they won't be too fancy or anything just what I think about the game and such and anybody can disagree if they want.

I will probably do Dragon Age 2 or Homefront as my first review.

PSN Maintenance Kicks Off All CFW Users for Now

Today, there was "sporadic PSN maintenance" which already has caused problems for all CFW users. It is claimed that Sony is finally enacting their hidden 3.60 PSN authentication system which has been discovered in the new 3.60 firmware released last week. The authentication system clearly will stop CFW from logging into the PSN, but I think that developers will make a bypass method before the week is over. The same thing happened with 3.56 firmware and the developers worked around it so I have hopes for a 3.60 bypass.

The message that appeared today stated that there would be sporadic PSN maintenance from approximately 9am to 3pm Pacific Standard Time. As the message states the maintenance is not yet over, but as of now many users are reporting they can not connect including myself. So if you can't live without PSN for a little OFW is your only choice. I am alright without PSN access so I will just wait it out.

3.60 + PSN Spoofer + No Video Response Fix

I have been a break for around a week and during this time quite a lot happened. The new firmware totally revamped the security of the PS3 so I would not be expecting a new CFW anytime soon so if you are still at 3.55 I would stay with it (plus 3.60 really doesn't have much improvements that directly effect you), and don't worry because along with the update many may think that PSN access is lost but on the same day that the update came out a useful version spoofer came out.
Team Rebug who has steadily been releasing homebrew for the PS3 devolved a version 3.60 spoofer which allows PSN access and extremely easy access as well. If you though fuckPSN was easy compared to the old methods then you will be shocked by the simplicity of this. All you need to do is install the pkg and run it and hit the X button to install the spoofer. It does take a while to install the spoofer and there is no sign at all when it is done so definitely wait a while so you know its done. When its done just exit the spoofer and sign in that easy.
3.60 version spoofer found here - http://rebug.me/?p=412

If you messed up the spoof install and your PS3 stops sending video input to your TV (this happened to me) you have to start your PS3 in recovery mode and your TV will receive input. Next you will have to reflash your PS3 to OFW 3.55 and then back to your preffered CFW. If you do this all your account info will be lost and saved files. If you want to avoid a loss in saved files you need a spare 2.5 inch SATA hard drive. Reflash your PS3 with the spare HD then after you are done put your old HD back in and your files will still be there, but your PSN account info will not but you can just enter that again.

New Games Requiring 3.56 Firmware

Two new games that have been leaked early both require Sony's latest 3.56 firmware. The first title is Dragon Age II which is a much anticipated game for many including me.Dragon Age II has been leaked onto the internet even though the release date is March 8th, which allowed hackers to figure out ways to run the game on 3.55 firmware. Apparently simple modifications to the PARAM.SFO and a repackaged EBOOT.BIN made the game compatible with 3.55. There is a fix available but to avoid encouraging piracy I won't lead to the download link.
The second game is MLB 11 The Show which also is scheduled to be released March 8th but was leaked online. MLB 11 obviously has not been looked at as much as Dragon Age II which is probably due to the popularity differences in the two games. I am pretty confident though that MLB 11 will be able to run on 3.55 with time though as amazing things can happen with time.

Bypass PS3 Console Ban on PSN

A new method to connected banned consoles to PSN has been released. Some games have slight problems but they should still be playable.


Here is a step by step guide released by www.ps3hacks.net

Tools required:
- PS3DNS-GUI: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2RU3VOHE
- PSID: [Download Here]

1. I hope that you put the new CA24.cer in dev_flash/data/cert

1. Download PS3DNS-GUI

2. Run “PS3DNS-GUI.exe” and choose your ip and region

3. Go to Tools -> Rewrite -> PS3DNS – eth0 -> Rules -> Add

4. Put every field like in the image, where in the image it says “your console id…” you have to write your original (banned) console id with no spaces:

5. Click ok -> ok (of course)

6. Go to your PS3, in DNS set in primary your pc’s ip, activate proxy, in host enter again your pc’s ip and in port enter 8888. Then you can test to confirm that you have network.

7. Try to log in to PSN (it can take some time, about 1 minute) and you are logged in!

Now if you want to go to PSN Store, then follow the following, else if you only want to play online go to step 10:

8. Execute PSID (Sony can discover it, but they can’t ban you becuase you are using a blank console id, so you don’t exist, you are a bot ) and there click Square to change to a random console id

9. Try now to go to PSN Store and you will enter there! You can download what you want but I alert you that some things are giving error when trying to download

10. First confirm that you have your original console id according to PSID (important) then you can run any game and play it online.

multiMAN v1.16.03 Released w/ NTFS Support

Dean has just released a long a waited new version of multiMAN which received many updates including NTFS support for external USB hard drives. While it is awesome that there is NTFS support now it seems pretty limited. It can not merge split files while coping and the only thing it can do with NTFS files are copy them to internal. It also contains 3.56 spoofing which could be pretty useful as well.

Download: multiMAN ver 1.16.03 BASE (20110225_200000).rar


Directly from multiMAN's change log:

01.16.02/03 -
* NTFS support for external USB HDD (START+/\ to switch to NTFS driver)* USB.CFG configuration file edit required: 0xVNID:0xPRID:V (vendor ID, product ID, V=number of volumes)
* Only copy from NTFS is supported - nothing more, nothing less
* Folder/File copy in FileManager from NTFS volumes
* Merging split files while copying from NTFS is not supported (only 1:1 copy)
* Altered display modes 1, 2, 3 and 4 (small device icon in lower right corner)
* Fixed 99% progress bar freeze
* Fixed "not enough space on destination drive" in rare cases
* New cache convention
* Added support for 3.56 spoof
* Probably a lot of other things...

Playstation File System Libraries to Bring NTFS Support with Homebrew

It seems that the PS3 is finally receiving the expected NTFS support that has been a wish of PS3 users for a long time. The PS3 is originally built on using the FAT32 file system which has a limit of 32 GB of storage which is quite annoying and can not accommodate a file larger than 4 GB. NTFS support will allow full portable hard drives to be used with PS3s so that you can accesses much more files and larger files. This will allow backing up games to external hard drives much easier and probably make booting backups from external hard drives easier. The file system library will have to be incorporated into the homebrew apps by the devs so we will have to wait for actual apps with NTFS support still but I am sure many people are looking out for it.

The creator of the libraries wrote a list of features on www.ps3-hacks.com and here is that list

* Support for multiple simultaneously connected devices.
* Hot swapping of devices.
* Support for multiple partitions (with different FS).
* NTFS support
o Alternate data streams
o Sparse files
o File compression
o B+ trees directory* FAT support
o FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
o Long file names (VFAT)
Writing to NTFS formatted volumes is not supported and not planned.
Check the README for everything else. 

You can find the file system library at ps3-hacks here

Sony is in a lot of Legal Trouble

The notorious iphone dev, geohot (George Hotz), has been in the processes of fighting Sony in court over the jailbreak he made for the PS3 recently. Sony's defenses are very weak and I believe geohot has a good chance of winning and a few days ago he started to accept donations to hire more lawyers to fight Sony. Sony's reasons for suing geohot consist of reasons according to geohot that "they allege I did things like play "super mario world, an unauthorized game" on MY PS3. And access MY PS3 in an unauthorized way." Obviously everybody who bought a PS3 should have permission to do whatever they please with it once it is theirs. I do not see Microsoft suing anybody for running programs they didn't develop on computer because that would be outrageous, and this is pretty much what Sony is claiming. Geohot was able to get enough donations to afford more lawyers to even the playing field with Sony's 5 lawyers, and Sony should watch out because this case doesn't seem to favor them.

Besides just having to worry about their case against geohot, a new case has been filed against them where they are ironically charged with breaking the same legal acts as geohot did. Because Sony removed the PS3's OtherOS ability they are being accused of breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, because Sony gave the decision to either keep the OtherOS and loose PSN or loose OtherOS and keep PSN the consumer looses system functionality both ways. It seems that Sony has their hands full of legal issues for a while and we will just have to wait and see how things turn out.

Agreeing again to Sony's Terms of Service for PSN

Just today when i went to sign into PSN a message popped up saying I must re-agree to the Terms of Service to access the PSN. The Terms of Service were recently updated adding specific parts about tampering with your connection certificates and other stuff which makes it appear to be a direct response to the recently ability for PS3 owners with 3.55 to get back onto PSN. I think that the agreeing again is directly related to the official statement Sony released this week which was basically saying that if you keep using CFW and anything related to it you will receive a ban from the PSN. I am not to worried and if I am banned will just purchase a new PS3 to play online with and enjoy my CFW offline.

Drizzt's FuckPSN creates the easiest access to PSN seen so far

Drizzt, the creator of the Gaia Manager, created an all in one program that connects you onto PSN. It only takes a couple of steps to connect as well.All you need is the ca24.cer, dev_blind.pkg, and fuckPsn-v0.4 which can all be found on Drizzt's website located here. Drizzt's program replaces ps3dns and charles making the PSN incredibly accessible again. To get this method to work all that needs to be done is:

1. Install the dev_blind.pkg
2. Run dev_blind on your PS3 and mount the flash
3. Use a tool to transfer files and move Drizzt's ca24.cer to the folder /dev_blind/data/cert/CA24.cer (you might want to back up your old ca24.cer
4. Set your PS3's primary DNS as your PC's IP and the secondary DNS as your router's IP
5. Reboot your PS3 and run fuckPsn-v0.4 and enjoy being on PSN agian

This was the only method I was able to get working with my PS3. I could have used eth0's method but at the time ps3dns was not working on my laptop and so I didn't think of running it on my desktop where it does work.

New Ways to connect to PSN on 3.55 with Kmeaw's CFW and new a CFW by Naima

To Connect on Kmeaw's CFW
eth0 has created a very simple guide (here) at psx-scene.com to get onto PSN with kmeaw CFW. It is not working for me but many people seem to be having success using it. My problem seems to be in running eth0's ps3dns program but I dont mind not being connected to PSN that much.

New Method Using Naima's CFW
Naima released a firmware just recently that lets users access PSN without following as much guides. It is basically Kmeaw's firmware with added PSN support and comes with the modified SSL certificates. The use of Charles Web Debugging Proxy is still necessary but this firmware will make it much easier to access PSN. I am downloading it now and am going to update my PS3 with it and test out if I can get on PSN agian

Kmeaw 3.55 can connect to PSN again

Apparently Kmeaw 3.55 CFW can connect to the PSN again using a SSL thing which I am not to sure how to do. I am going to try it later though and if I can figure it out I will post a guide on how to do it.

DNS Trick for CFW 3.55 Stopped Working PS3

The DNS trick that has been keeping many people connect to the PSN even without updating their PS3's has finally been blocked by Sony. This means people such as myself either have to play offline or upgrade to ofw 3.56 for now. I have heard about using the proxy trick and am going to try that out but I have to wait for my USB wireless adapter. I order one which can also be used with Backtrack 4 to crack WEP and WPA which is kinda cool. I will just be playing my PS3 offline for the next few days which will also give me sometime to play Red Dead Redemption which i just started yesterday and I am having a blast playing it.