Apparently 'Hacked Sony PS3 & Got Sued For It' Looks Good On The Resume
from the lulsec-is-updating-their-resumes-as-we-speak dept
Last we heard from George Hotz, aka GeoHot, he was settling with Sony, in the lawsuit it brought against him for jailbreaking the PS3 to restore a feature that Sony used to advertise but retroactively deleted. Apparently, those sorts of skills are in demand at Facebook, who has now made it official that it has hired GeoHot, though it’s not clear what he’ll be working on. As if people needed any more reasons to hack Sony, apparently now it can help you get a job…
Filed Under: geohot, george hotz
Companies: facebook
Comments on “Apparently 'Hacked Sony PS3 & Got Sued For It' Looks Good On The Resume”
“As if people needed any more reasons to hack Sony, apparently now it can help you get a job…”
That’s something that’s hard to come by these days. Maybe I’ll consider hacking Sony if it will convince Facebook to hire me 🙂
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The problem with hiring the best cr/hackers money can buy is you have to take R E A L Good care of them.. Who wants to take them under contract? Give them MBR keys to the kingdom and that can turn out to be Oh, too bad for Facebook /“_)
ay-up. that’ll do it.
hehehe.
Hotz did NOT hack Sony, Hotz developed a mod (which IS a true hack, hitting a site is a crack) that put the functionality back into the PS3 that Sony stripped from it with software updates. Functionality that was the main reason that many of us bought a PS3 instead of an Xbox. Sony’s suit basically said that, even though you bought and paid for the PS3, it’s not really yours and you can’t modify it. Hotz put the video on YouTube that showed how to mod the PS3 and that’s when Sony sued him….And THAT is why Sony got their asses CRACKED 14 times in 6 weeks.
Hotz also hacked the iPhone, but Sony didn’t get their panties in a wad…..but then the Japanese DO like their young girl soiled panties, don’t they.
So if you don’t believe Sony’s stance that you paid $300 for a PS3, but it really isn’t YOUR’S to do with as you please…..figure out how to mod it, put up the video, get sued and apply at FB
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Apple that is for the iPhone. I mistakenly put Sony there….it’s late
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Let me start out with: I agree with everything your saying.
However, are we really to the point where we are debating the definition of the word crack and hack? I have to point out that neither of your definitions fits with the actual definitions and are more like web slang. See Webster, Princeton, Google etc… Below are the closest definitions to what your getting at.
Hack
-Use a computer to gain unauthorized access to data in a system
-Gain unauthorized access to (data in a computer)
Crack
-Break or cause to break open or apart
At best, they are the same thing as they both involve a breach of security measures. It’s like saying there is a difference between hit and slap because you can only slap a bitch but you hit a man.
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Yes, hacking is to gain unauthorized entry to a computer or device. Cracking is to remove protection (generally some sort of CD check or other DRM) from software to make it usable by anyone.
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Yes, hacking is to gain unauthorized entry to a computer or device.
No! Hacking traditionally meant programming in an ad hoc manner. Some of the people who did that used their expertise to gain unauthorised entry into systems – but that is not the only (or in my book even the main) meaning of the word.
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Some of the people who did that used their expertise to gain unauthorised entry into systems
one of the main themes in the hacker ethic has always been universal access. this used to be a huge deal when computers were super rare and super expensive.
the advent of [relatively] cheap PCs and [relatively] easy to find internet access has mostly eliminated the need for unauthorized access, but that wasn’t always the case.
in those dark days, all learning on a computer that wasn’t part of a university, business, or government program was basically unauthorized because only universities, businesses, and the government had computers. back then there were no whitehats.
this quest for computer time is why the media uses the word hacker to mean trespasser or criminal.
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Dictionary.com says this about hacker “slang for a computer fanatic, esp one who through a personal computer breaks into the computer system of a company, government, etc”
Wikipedia says: Hack (computer security) v., Originally derived from verb HACK, “To cut into repeatedly and/or irregularly,” for usage as a Slang Term or Jargon for the act of breaking into (hacking into) computers and computer networks which has been adopted as a common term in Computer Science
If I go to any website and look for something to let me run a program without a CD (thus bypassing the protections) I would have to search for the NOCD Crack.
At one time, in the very limited programmer subculture, participants in that group referred to themselves as “hackers” without the connotation of illicit activities. But that is by far not the most common use.
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A hacker is someone who likes breaking things apart to see what they are made of, and then reassemble them as something totally random, just for sport or knowledge. Like, turning a toaster into a Coffee machine…that also makes toast, purifies water and claps it’s hands when you say something smart.
A cracker is someone who likes breaking things apart to see to try to gain some sort of advantage. They break locks to try to rob what’s inside. They crack passwords to “steal” information. They “crack” games to play them for free. They disassemble toasters to turn them into heat ray weapons. That sort of stuff.
So, basically, they both like breaking things apart, the main difference is their motivation: hackers do it for sport and knowledge, crackers do it for money and personal gain.
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Of all the people here whose definitions of hackers are lacking, you made my eyes twitch the least.
A hacker is someone who is recognized as a type of master programmer. Ah, heck, let’s just copy the jargon file:
” 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users’ Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.
2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
3. A person capable of appreciating hack value.
4. A person who is good at programming quickly.
5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in ?a Unix hacker?. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)
6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.
7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. “
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Of all the people here whose definitions of hackers are lacking, you made my eyes twitch the least.
the only thing that definition lacks is a date. AC’s definition is a fairly modern definition of a hacker, specifically a hardware hacker or a reverse engineer. in 1980 it would be a passable definition of a fone phreak if you replaced all of the stuff about toasters with phones.
the definition from the jargon file is a great broad definition of hacking or a circa 1985 definition of the academic unix hacker.
what is missing from both definitions is the granularity that exists in hacking. the many facets of subject matter, intent, ethics, and approach can radically change the definition of hacking.
for example, hacking a toaster into a death ray in a controlled environment and disclosing your findings in order to make toasting safer for the general public is very different from secretly hacking a toaster into a death ray because you are fulfilling a contract hit. i would argue that the latter better qualifies as criminality or terrorism than hacking.
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Turning a toaster into a coffee machine is exactly what gives hackers a bad name.. as well as being a complete waste of time >:-D
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He did hack the Sony PS3, as in the original meaning of the word hack, i.e. to modify the code so as to make it do something else/new.
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Hotz did NOT hack Sony, Hotz developed a mod (which IS a true hack, hitting a site is a crack) that put the functionality back into the PS3 that Sony stripped from it with software updates.
Um. That’s exactly what I said. I never said he hacked Sony. I said he hacked the PS3 — which is entirely accurate.
Re: Dumbass
Did you really just say he did not HACK Sony, he developed a mod (which is a true HACK)?
Go back to school you aren’t ready for the real world
BTW, my family has 7 PSN accounts between us, and I was happy as hell that Sony got reamed with hacking….they deserved every second of it and more!
The word “hack” actuallly had a different meaning originally, that being to “(heavily) modify computer software or hardware”.
The current commonly used meaning is, as you say, different.
Re: Definition of 'hack'
I’m one of the orginal ‘hackers’ from a time when the word ment you knew what you were doing…
The word literally means:
Make it work.
let me rephrase that, it means:
Make It Work.
I is not specific to software or hardware. You can do software hacks to make it work or hardware hacks to make it work.
The press got hold of the word and defamed it because it sounds oh so scary… Mom! Mom! There’s a hacker in the house. Get the shotgun Pa, we got git that hacker!
What a shame.
but the original hacker from way back during the infancy of PC’s was they simply reverse engineer software to figure out what and how it worked. Mitnick was not so much a hacker, but a thief..
I was one back then, then i grew old and raised kids, had a mortgage.. blah blah.. and left the whole hacker scene and grew up.
Hackers - not Crackers or Phreakers
Nope – that’s not the correct definition of hack or what a hacker does. That’s the “new” distorted version the populist media have created.
Refer to the book Hackers:Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy.
Microsoft has been hiring hackers for years. The difference is: Microsoft invites hackers to break them and reward the talented hackers with money and jobs. Works a bit better than covering eyes and ears, doesn’t it?
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Odd, that actually connecting with fans works.
Hacker
From the Jargon File:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html
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Ah, how I wish I had scrolled down before being redundant.
Thank you sir
Re: Hacker
This is an obsolete definition. Meanings change. In fact many of the words we use today mean something entirely different than what they did at some point in the past.
Remember when gay meant happy? But if you call some smiling on the street “gay” today you might get a different reaction than you would have 50 years ago. Very few people will think you are saying the man is happy, since that definition is obsolete.
According to your link, a hacker was originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe. If you can accept that the definition changed once, it should not be difficult to accept it has changed again.
This post comes across as rather spiteful and ignorant in the way it confounds GeoHot’s reverse engineering the PS3 with others breaking into Sony’s computer systems to steal user data. If it is meant to parody the mainstream media representation of hackers, I guess for me its in the not-funny-department …
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This post comes across as rather spiteful and ignorant in the way it confounds GeoHot’s reverse engineering the PS3 with others breaking into Sony’s computer systems to steal user data.
Except that nowhere does it do that.
Which I already explained above.
I’m confused. There are a bunch of these comments coming through — all from anonymous commenters. Was this mentioned somewhere where someone falsely said that this post conflated hacking hardware with breaking into a server?
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Quite possibly because he didn’t hack anything, he at best reverse engineered it.
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What? Do you want some RevEng in the article, as well? I hear it tastes like jam…
For me hacking and cracking are just semantics, both need expertise to modify something to do what one wants is just that historically the word hacking has been used by white hats that were cracking software and hardware to distinguish themselves from the black hats, but really there is no difference if you think about it.
And normal people saw that, there is no real difference between the two except for the wishes of people to differentiate themselves from others trying to signal “hey I’m not evil”, but to others there were no distinctions, what the white hats do the black hats also do, they use the same tools, the same techniques is just one don’t wreck havoc on others systems and the other helps himself to whatever is there.
But this is just my opinion, eventually people will settle the issue and those words can end up with totally different meanings LoL
Man, there sure are a lot of GeoHot lovers with poor reading comprehension around here.
More proof that Facebook is slowly losing is.
How about reporting their losses of members in the US? You know, social media on the wane?
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Yes…
Because Zuckerman is the third richest man in tech.
He’s not winning. He doesn’t have Charlie Sheen. He’s losing big time when you talk about a new service. He’s a winner for not integrating Facebook all over the place.
In other news today, the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 4%
= (
why cannt we get!!!!!!!! MODS!!!!!!!!!!