Geohot Gets Sued By Sony *UPDATED*

[Phillyphries]

Geohot, the creator of the 3.55-jb MFW is currently being sued by Sony for extortion, "enabling piracy", and so forth.

One of the charges states:

page 19 line 10

"6. 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(7)(B) – Intent to Extort
Finally, SCEA will likely prevail on its claim under §1030(a)(7)(B), which prohibits
“intent to extort from any person any money or other thing of value” by threatening “to obtain
information from a protected computer without authorization or in excess of authorization or
to impair the confidentiality of information obtained from a protected computer without
authorization or by exceeding authorized access.” Hotz violated this provision when, in the
same post in which the published SCEA’s Keys, he attempted to obtain from SCEA “a thing
of value” in the form of employment: “if you want your next console to be secure, get in touch
with me.” Bricker Decl. at ¶22, Exh. U.
To prevent further harm to SCEA, the Court should immediately enjoin Defendants’
unauthorized access of the PS3 System"

Feel free to discuss, but please, no saying the F word and Sony in the same sentence. It gets annoying to read after a while.

*UPDATE* It seems like Sony planted evidence on Geohot. They donated a fake donation link with $1.00. lol
Next court hearing will be Thursday morning at 10:00 AM PST.
Also there are new documents on his page.

Source: http://psx-scene.com/forums/f6/sony-mib ... otz-75467/

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[MaX_SLayeR]

Geohot, the creator of the 3.55-jb MFW is currently being sued by Sony for extortion, "enabling piracy", and so forth.

One of the charges states:

page 19 line 10

"6. 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(7)(B) – Intent to Extort
Finally, SCEA will likely prevail on its claim under §1030(a)(7)(B), which prohibits
“intent to extort from any person any money or other thing of value” by threatening “to obtain
information from a protected computer without authorization or in excess of authorization or
to impair the confidentiality of information obtained from a protected computer without
authorization or by exceeding authorized access.” Hotz violated this provision when, in the
same post in which the published SCEA’s Keys, he attempted to obtain from SCEA “a thing
of value” in the form of employment: “if you want your next console to be secure, get in touch
with me.” Bricker Decl. at ¶22, Exh. U.
To prevent further harm to SCEA, the Court should immediately enjoin Defendants’
unauthorized access of the PS3 System"

Feel free to discuss, but please, no saying the F word and Sony in the same sentence. It gets annoying to read after a while.

Source: http://psx-scene.com/forums/f6/sony-mib ... otz-75467/

I remember him saying that. That IS extortion. He posts keys to blackmail Sony into hiring him. Whether he was joking or not, that's how the court will see it. I suppose that's what Geohot gets for his ego.

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[Phillyphries]

I remember him saying that. That IS extortion. He posts keys to blackmail Sony into hiring him. Whether he was joking or not, that's how the court will see it. I suppose that's what Geohot gets for his ego.

He may or may not go to court with this, but I assume they have a valid reason to sue him because he released Sony's copyrighted property while saying "If you want your next console to be secure, get in touch with me."
Don't forget that he won the Iphone jailbreak case.

[Mytherial]

I read the two motions on his website and it seems like they have a pretty solid case against him this time around. The only thing he MIGHT have going for him is the fact that he only hacked the system to enable homebrew. They have to prove that his intentions were to condone piracy which as far as I ever heard, he only stated that it might LEAD to piracy, but he would not condone piracy. It's also why his "jailbreak" version doesn't have the capability to run pirated games without jumping through a lot of hoops. In Sony's favor though... He did make that crack saying they should hire him as he released his keys. That could easily be looked upon as extortion.

[Phillyphries]

I read the two motions on his website and it seems like they have a pretty solid case against him this time around. The only thing he MIGHT have going for him is the fact that he only hacked the system to enable homebrew. They have to prove that his intentions were to condone piracy which as far as I ever heard, he only stated that it might LEAD to piracy, but he would not condone piracy. It's also why his "jailbreak" version doesn't have the capability to run pirated games without jumping through a lot of hoops. In Sony's favor though... He did make that crack saying they should hire him as he released his keys. That could easily be looked upon as extortion.

And not to mention we DON'T KNOW what things Geohot has on his hard drive, and as soon as he deletes any possible evidence, he is automatically guilty.

[Viet]

GEohot must run to MEXICO !

[VllnHalf]

Update: Nilay here -- let's take a look at what's going on. This isn't a "lawsuit" in the traditional sense, since Sony hasn't filed a complaint for copyright infringement or whatever against Geohot and friends. Instead, the company appears to be trying to shove the genie back in the bottle and have the jailbreak and any information about the jailbreak removed from the web by filing a temporary restraining order. That might work in the short term -- Geohot's already pulled his pages down -- but history suggests that the forces of paperwork rarely triumph over the righteous anger of nerds, and that this code is out there for good. That said, we'll see what the court says tomorrow; although we very much doubt Sony's melodramatic proposed motion and order will be granted as written, we wouldn't be surprised if some sort of order is eventually granted -- and then from there a formal lawsuit is likely just a few days away

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/11/sony ... -exploits/

The code was put out there. It's over. It spread across the PSP and PS3 scene faster then light filling black voids. I even have backups of it on an external hard drive.

F-Word Sony

[Mytherial]

the code IS out there but Sony still has a chance at least with this.... will be much harder to get access to the code now that it's been pulled. And if Sony wins this suit, they will have grounds to sue anyone else who tries to release anything related to Geohot and Fail0verflow's tools in the future making it far more dangerous for hackers to try and break the system later. It's about the only thing they could do under the circumstances. This way it limits the possibility of rampant piracy that had virtually been enabled using those tools. Those that already have the codes etc are probably good to go. But getting access to them now will be much harder. Sony is simply trying to mitigate the damage. And from what I've read elsewhere, Sony is looking into the ban hammer for those using these hacks so users using them will most likely have to stay offline with their ps3's or risk having their system bricked in a future update. That's only speculation however.


Edit: Clarified a couple statements

[N!ck]

I guess Geohot just dun goof'd. Sucks for him, I hope someone bails him out if he does get jailed.
As for Sony, they need to start recruiting some ethical hackers so that they can fix all their security holes before making a new console.

[VllnHalf]

Geohot minor provided by the most badass professor ever: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/