loc978 said:
Dear hackers: I demand equal rights for Microsoft users. It's a slightly more deserving company anyway.
*goes back to playing games on his secure PC running ubuntu*
Lol. I watched two sets of videos about hacking the Wii & PS3 (and incedentally a lot of other consoles.)
They firstly pointed out that pretty much all console hacks except the PS2 were done for the purposes of running homebrew software and/or linux.
(The PS2 having been hacked explicitly for piracy.)
The only console NOT hacked was the PS3, which changed almost instantly the moment Linux support was removed.
They do point out that piracy is a side effect of these hacks, but that's a different issue.
The main thing they were discussing was what console security was actually like:
The Wii had moderate security, but some badly implemented security functions meant it was useless, and hackers can do anything they like with one, essentially. (Gamecube backwards compatibility was also an inherent security flaw because of the lack of security supported by the gamecube. And you can't retroactively add security without breaking gamecube support)
The PS3 looked on the surface like it would have the strongest security of any console... But, as it turns out, it's only strong in theory, because again, some fundamental security stuff wasn't actually implemented properly.
(And that doesn't even begin to cover PSN security, which relied on the idea that the PS3 couldn't be cracked.)
In both the case of the Wii & PS3, the eventual hacks that were developed allowed such low-level system access that there was no possible way of patching the vulnerability.
Then there's microsoft.
Which actually created strong security, AND implemented it properly. As a result, while the Xbox 360 has been hacked at least twice, and these hacks allowed a fairly large degree of access to the hardware, the security setup was still strong enough that Microsoft could quickly patch out the holes the hackers were using, rendering the hacks useless, and any hacker back where they started from once the patch was implemented.
In other words, Microsoft actually knows what it's doing and while there were a few flaws, they weren't at a low enough level to be a permanent hole. Meanwhile Nintendo & Sony both implemented security systems that look good on paper, but implemented them with fatal flaws in them that mean they're unfixable short of recalling all the hardware and software ever made for the respective consoles.
I'm sure the Xbox and xbox live get hacked every so often. But the difference is, Microsoft didn't botch their security, and can generally fix whatever exploits the hackers were using.
