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06 May 2005
A hacking group calling itself the 'Paradogs' has broken the copyright protection on Sony's Playstation Portable.
The group succeeded in extracting the files from the Universal Media Disc (UMD), a proprietary storage module that contains games or movies for the Sony gaming device.
The ability to extract files from the discs is a first step in producing illegal copies of the software or making adjustments to the code.
Because there are no UMD burners available, the crack will not cause much harm for now. But users could in theory put the software on a memory stick and run it from the storage device.
The Paradogs specialise in removing copyright protection from video games for a range of platforms such as PCs and Sony's Playstation. The group also creates 'cheats' that give players infinite lives or resources.
The Playstation Portable has been on sale in Japan since last year, and was launched in the US on 24 March. It is slated for release in Europe on 1 September.
The device uses the UMD format to store games and movies. Developing the disc was the only way for Sony to create a storage medium that was cheap to produce and small enough to fit into the device.
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Do you agree?
Everything will once be cracked...
First of all i would like to remark this little error you made: Cheats arn't createt by hackers, crackers,... but by the game creaters. But what they do is making trainers. Trainers are little programs that you can set in your game directories and allow you to give you for exampele life, ammo,... by pressing a button. By pressing the button the trainer changes a value in the memmory that wil couse the cheat. Everything will be cracked, even the psp it is only a mather of time. But good artical anyways
Posted by: .... 08 Nov 2006
Rip Off
If the company's that made these things were not so greedy and sold the stuff for a reasanable price then most people would not even think about copying.
Posted by: Cracker Smith 18 Aug 2006
thats funny
better luck next time sony
Posted by: chaca chaca 28 Feb 2006
true :)
I am a PSP owner and i know alot about this stuff and i can tell you that its just great the crackers and hackers from all around the world are trying to do something together and thats great and thay even got the PSP to run win95 and Linux :) isnt that great ? I am really happy for that and i think that if the games where cheaper like 20$ i will buy tham not download tham but i think that the most great think will be to buy a UMD Burner and burn all the movies i want and all the games and music :) its not fear that Sony dont want to release a burner even for 300$ i will buy it :) And last think is that everybody including me have something illegal on his computer i read somewhere that 89% of the population in the WORLD have is using illegal software :) and if you can get something free will you pay for it ? P.S. Sorry for my english but i am from Bulgaria :)
Posted by: djkee 29 Dec 2005
Nice try...
What I find particularly sad is that Sony have probably invested a significant amount of capital in their proprietry disk protection system, only for it to be hacked and cracked. It seems to be a fact of life these days that if you spend lots of time and money protecting your systems, it "inspires" a more determined criminal attitude to dream up appropriate countermeasures. In one sense, I admire the ingenious nature of these folks. Incidentally, I recall that Sega had a similar protection scheme on the Dreamcast (GDR?)- which in the long run proved to be fairly lame. Looks like Sony should have done their homework. Hey... being a layman- what do I know... Sony are a $X,000,000 company ;) Good try Sony- but unfortunately, not good enough.
Posted by: Grailey Kootrimand 29 Dec 2005
lol
yeah pay 40 quid for game or pay nothing and download it?wot would you do?I wouldnt download them if they were cheaper say 20 quid. Sony r just greedy, hackers are heros!
Posted by: sentinal_187 24 Dec 2005
any integrity?....
i really don't see how it's so great to go and hack all these games n stuff. i just kinda think that people might want to stick with the good old days when people had somewhat of integrity. besides, hacking these discs is illegal.
Posted by: ... 20 Dec 2005
ha!!
most psp games suck!
Posted by: jose 18 Nov 2005
hacking can be good...
It's a shame Sony are not making the device more open to 3rd party developers. I bought my PSP and like a good boy updated the firmware to the latest version from the net update function then went online to find that all the really useful stuff (spreadsheets, email clients, word processors, quake2) made by the hacking community for PSP only work on the original firmware version 1.5 and there is NO rollback. What could have been my pocket office got ruined by Sony's greed and control. Yes there will be a bit of piracy but as a payoff for turning the PSP into something much more than a games/movie console is surely a price worth paying?
Posted by: UKPhantom 19 Oct 2005
Live4ever1
Man thats tough luck shame because its going to reduce sales of legal games by a bit.
Posted by: Shane 11 Oct 2005