The Playstation Classic has been hacked, 3 mere days after its release. (And of course it runs Doom)
During a marathon of Twitch streaming sessions, hacker Yifanlu of PS Vita exploits fame managed to hack the Playstation Classic in front of a live audience, with guest appearance from fellow Molecule Team hackers Davee and xyz. In the last stream, Yifan sideloaded (and played) Crash Bandicoot on the device.
But it appears they were not the firsts to be able to hack the device: Japanese hacker @bakueikozo demonstrated the device loading additional PS1 games from a USB drive about a day ago. A few hours later, hacker nvsofts showcased a screenshot of Doom running on the device. That part’s interesting not only because this is Doom, but because it is a PC version of the game running via Wayland (A Display Server for Linux).
実際にゲームのイメージファイルを作ってロードさせてみました。
刺してるところが映ってないけど、USBメモリから読み込んでます。
今は完全手動だけど、まあやればちゃんと組み込めるよね。プレイステーションクラシック ハック完了。
遊びはこれまで。
おちんぎんをもらう仕事に戻るんだ… pic.twitter.com/qQxi6voX0p— ひろみつ (@bakueikozo) December 5, 2018
Yifanlu’s Twitch channel shows his whole hacking process, if you’re willing to ingest 15 hours of video, that is. Still very interesting to witness.
It appears no serious attempt was made by Sony to secure the Playstation Classic: Yifanlu has mentioned findings from hacker madmonkey, which revealed that the firmware update files on the Playstation Classic were signed with a key that has been embedded by mistake on the device. In other words, it seems whoever handled the encryption process on the Playstation Classic mixed the private and public keys, and shared the device’s private key to the world.
Stream in an hour. It’ll just be me laughing for the whole night. pic.twitter.com/nUrYmvCG4E
— Yifan (@yifanlu) December 6, 2018
The proof of concepts and prototypes of these hackers are of course not usable “as is” (and very little has been released even though all the information is out there by now), but there’s no question at this point that tools will be made available to the public very soon to hack the device. From turning it into a general purpose Linux machine, to running a hakchi-like tool and install way more PS1 games than the Playstation Classic shipped with, many options will probably show up.
It’s still worth reminding that the device is overall sub-par. Hacking it as fast as possible was seen as a fun challenge for many hackers, but in terms of usefulness for end users, many have called out that you’d be better of with a PS3, a Vita TV, or a Raspberry Pi. However for those of you who did buy the device, it just became much more cooler.
Who the *** cares? Buy an retropie and geht lucky
first
yay I watched 12hrs of the stream…. obtw first
that was… euhm fast 🙂
So it’s just a glorified emulator then. What about game compatibility. Does it inhibit bug/glitch commonly found in emulator?
No offence to the guys in the hacking scene, to whom we owe every second of joy with our consoles, Sony just winked at us with PSC.
I don’t want to undermine the effort made by the hackers, but since PSC was a product from which the profit came strictly out of unit sales and not from the software, since it can’t connect to PSN in order to buy more titles, Sony couldn’t care less if it was easy to get hacked or not.
It goes without saying that it now is more fun for us. I got the system and i haven’t gotten it out of the box yet, because i waited for this day.
I am amused by Yifan’s tweet. Reminds me of a kid digging holes at the beach then covering them with a sheet of paper and a thin layer of sand and rubbing his hands like an evil genius while mildly annoyed adults go about their day.
I think everything should run Doom. My sandwich should also run Doom.
In all fairness, why the heck would you even buy this? Get a Pi, sync up a Dualshock 3, and you have PS1 style controller, wirelessly, for a far more genuine PS1 feel.
This thing is just garbage on every possible level. Hacked, or otherwise.
*** Doom! lol That guy totally Pwns, mad props for an early Xmas present. Satna came early this year! Cheers!
Knew it was only a matter of time before it got hacked. Can’t wait to see what comes out of this.
I still see no reason why anyone should buy this. It’s simply too weak. Even a PS Vita TV (aka PlayStation TV) is better in every regard.
Do you see many new PSTVs lying around ? Growing on branches ?
Yeah though, the PSC and the PSTVs are identical in appearance, i see your point.
wow great marketing from Sony.they were smart to make it so, this would ensure tremendous sales volume and create another successful product
Wow, even the encryption is sub-par. Every part of it screams rushed to market for Xmas cash in, pure laziness made with almost casual disinterest by presumably Sony interns. I feel bad for the poor suckers who buy this thing full price and end up disappointed, or worse having to deal with disappointed kids/spouses wondering what the heck is going on. The only people who seem to have done their job properly in this spitshow are the people who designed the case and controllers, which from a glance look authentic and cover up the cruddy underpowered overpriced machine that dwells inside.
Poetic enough for ya?
No attempt was made so people could tinker with it? Which may also increase sales. There is no extra value for Sony and no internet access on the device, but now people don’t need to complain as much. lol
wahaha lol, a can say only that, and i think many others too =)))