The PlayStation Classic is actually a new product of Sony (it is only released for a week). Yet, it has already become victim to hackers since they will not waste any time when trying to crack into retro remake consoles. After that, additional games are able to work on the console via USB drives.
PlayStation Classic Is Hacked
Being released at the beginning of December 2018 as a new product of Sony, the plug-and-play PlayStation Classic system does not receive a warm welcome. Yet, it still becomes the target of hackers. In less than a week, the hackers have succeeded in cracking the system – the PlayStation Classic gets hacked!!!
Games on PlayStation Classic
In this new console, you can find only slow PAL version of several of these games (only twenty games are pre-loaded); the nostalgic and classic games like Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot are not included.
It seems that the missing games are influenced by recent remasters, for instance, Spyro Reignited Trilogy. Yet, the source code of the system seems to indicate that several other games could have been installed.
What’s worse, there is no built-in mechanism allowing you to add more games. This has made many people feel much disappointed.
Yet, though the attack to PlayStation Classic increases the risk of file corruption, it also brings benefits:
- Open up all sorts of possibilities.
- Allow you to load other games from a USB drive.
Some people even get excited when hearing the news that they can play games via USB drive.
How to recover corrupted files?
How Hackers Crack the System
It was not long after the system was released when hackers plan to recognize a software security key that is located on the system. At that time, they find there is no security check in the system when booting up.
What does this mean? Actually, the lack of security check makes it relatively easy to load additional files on the system by using an external drive. Sony has not done a lot of work to hide the tools that are required to basically crack the system wide open.
The famous console hackers (such as madmonkey1907 and Yifan Lu) are documenting the process online and store the code of the system onto an external device. Then, they discover a fact – the key needed to decrypt the system’s most sensitive software elements is hidden on the device itself by Sony.
Guess you may be interested in ransomware prevention.
Examples of Hacking
Since then, huge progress was made by the console-hacking community, in terms of changing the PlayStation Classic into a platform agnostic emulator.
- Yifan Lu makes it possible to run Crash Bandicoot on the device through a USB stick; this is achieved since the box doesn’t include a step to check whatever is running on the device.
- BleemSync is one of the programs (an open-source tool) designed by GitHub console hacker named Pat Hartl; it is able to add games to PlayStation Classic system via a USB drive; in the meantime, it will remove your access to the original games on the system until the external USB drive is unplugged.
FYI: how to deal with a broken USB stick:
It looks like a lot of code wrangling is involved during the hacking process. As a result, for people who are not fond of INI files editing or databases editing, it is not really a beneficial hack. Yet, you can see from the whole process that the console indeed lack security protection.
All in all, the breach of copyright seems to be a powerful blow to a company like Sony, which disdains piracy.
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