Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past months, you probably know that the PS3 has been hacked a few weeks ago. Modern consoles are getting tough to break (Sony apparently spent more time strengthening their security than creating an enjoyable customer experience), and this recent hack has firmware limitations, but as a geek I was very eager to give it a try.

I’ve been contacting several people, trying to leverage the recent popularity of this blog to get a free sample to test, but so far nobody’s been following up, so I ended up buying one of these usb dongles by myself. (If you’re one of the makers or websites I contacted recently, I’m still willing to test your product, so don’t hesitate to contact me).

The PS3 exploit relies on a series of vulnerabilities that I won’t detail here. To the end user, what matters is that the hack works only on the PS3 firmware 3.41 (don’t upgrade if you are interested in this), and is relatively easy to trigger since it only requires a USB dongle, no hardware manipulation, and no loss of the PS3 warranty.

Several solutions exist to get one of these dongles, from the cheap DIY methods (thanks to the awesome work of the ps3 scene… I don’t know all of them yet, but some of the names are familiar since they were hugely involved in the psp scene, such as mathieuLH) to some very expensive commercial versions (like the infamous original one, the psjailbreak).

I initially wanted to go with a DIY method, but the ATMEL motherboards (required for the process) have been out of stock for a while, and my ham and cheese technique is painful in the long run (fed up with cleaning the usb cable everytime I run a game).

After a while, I decided to go with one of the cheap commercial solutions, the PS3Break, which, for a price of less than 40$ sounded like a “not too risky” attempt. Well, let’s get the cat out of the box: although this product more or less does what it’s supposed to do, it is a badly finished product with a pinch of ripoff and I don’t recommend it. Read along.

"Now solving upgrade issue" yeah, right... it seems that for PS3Break, size DOES matter

the PS3Break usb key allows you to run backups of games from your ps3. It runs almost out of the box (you need to download a “backup manager” from the official website), and using it is child’s play. You unplug the console, put the usb key, turn the console on by following the simple instructions, run the “backup manager” from a fat32 external drive, backup your bluray onto the hard drive, and you’re set, you can now run the backup from your hard drive without the original disc. In the following videos, I’m showing you how the exploit triggers, and how I run a copy of Fallout 3 (thanks Dave, great game so far!) while a different disc (Red Dead Redemption) is in my drive.

Great. Pirates will love it, but that’s not what I’m after. I’m more into homebrews…(ah, also watching PAL DVDs I legally own would be great, stupid Sony). The “upgrade” button on the usb key made me believe that I could upload new drivers, maybe my own copy of the PSGroove to the key, etc… It turns out there are 3 official versions of the PS3Break out there (not to mention the copies), and for one of them the upgrade is not possible without hardware manipulation.

Seriously? 3 revisions of the product in a month??? This screams “amateurs” to me. Clearly, PS3Break is a product that was created quickly in order to make as much money as possible using cheap components (PIC microcontrollers instead of the ATMEL?) while letting the customers in a cloud of uncertainty regarding the version of the product in order to avoid solving the issues (there are 2 versions 1.0 of the product…you’ll notice that version 1.1 is usually more expensive because it works) Looking at the documentation on the ps3Break.com site almost made me laugh. These guys warn their users about not buying fake products, yet they distribute a key that doesn’t work as advertised for several weeks. With the mess of distributors showing you the wrong pictures, etc, if you order one of these, the risk of getting one of the non upgradable ones is extremely high, and then good luck to get a refund, so I wouldn’t bother.

If you get a non upgradable key, you have the guarantee that you won’t benefit from the updates provided by the community, which means you’ll end up needing to buy another one at some point. As an example, some models of the PS3break (the one I have) require you to have a blu ray disc in your drive if you want to run one of your backups. That’s not a huge limitation, but already some versions of PSGroove remove that limitation, and you can’t get this with the initial model of the PS3Break. What will it be next time? What if someone finds a way to re-enable a similar hack using usb keys on newer firmwares? You’ll be the poor PS3Break owner who got sc*** up. Sure, it’s less expensive, but what’s the point if you have to buy another one in two weeks?

Some people told me that I was a bit harsh. After all, the tool DOES allow to run backups. Well, true, but revision 1.0 of this key was clearly an attempt at “robbing the bank” by providing bad quality keys, making people believe that you could get these keys for half the price, when actually the reason these models of the PS3Break are so cheap is that it’s a non-working product. Would you buy an iPhone for half the price if it couldn’t play mp3 or games/apps? I wouldn’t…

So, be warned, the distributors themselves have probably no incentive in letting you know if you are getting the “correct” version or not, so in doubt, better get something better.

This is a nice gadget, but as far as hacking is concerned, this is useless and doesn’t work as advertised. It is obvious that this product wasn’t fully tested before being sold. Also, the documentation regarding the ps3break is awful (the broken english doesn’t help), and you’ll probably get much more clear documentation on dedicated forums by going with a DIY solution.

Well, that’s a developer’s point of view, but from a user’s point of view, this product is still probably helpful. This is not the tool I was looking for so I’ll get a new one, but I’m sure lots of people could use this, so if you want a free PS3Break, post a comment here (not spam, a real comment!). In about 2 weeks, I’ll randomly select one of you guys and send you the key as a present. Shipping’s on me,  how’s that? (put a real email address in there, or I won’t be able to contact you).

So, conclusion, if you’re getting one for free, it’s a fun gadget, but if you’re paying for it, I don’t recommend the PS3Break.

Oh, and again, if you’re a seller of such dongles, a better one than the ps3break, don’t hesitate to contact me wagic.the.homebrew at gmail dot com, I’ll be more than happy to review a sample 🙂

Update: this contest is over, congratulations to Saint!