Geohot revealed the key and just recently created a custom v3.55 firmware which allows for homebrew and Linux to be run on the latest Sony PS3 firmware.
While the hacker does not believe in piracy, others have been busy creating custom 3.55 firmwares that will run backup managers, allowing for the playback of pirated games right from the hard drive.
Infinity Ward says it has fallen victim to the ever increasing amount of users running custom firmwares, but says the hacking does not affect the latest game in the series, Black Ops, which was developed by Treyarch.
Reads the full statement(via IW forums):
Sony has recently acknowledged a breach in security on the PS3 which has resulted in the hardware and its games to become exposed to exploits and hacks. Modern Warfare 2 is no exception to this security exploit and we understand that some of you have experienced problems with stats and other issues associated with this.
Games rely on the security of the encryption on the platforms they're played on, therefore; updates to the game through patches will not resolve this problem completely, unless the security exploit itself is resolved on the platform. However, that doesn't mean we're not going to look into every option available to us. Regretfully, Call of Duty games are receiving the bulk of the hacker's attention, due to its high player counts and popularity. However, the number of legitimate players severely outweighs the bad apples.
If you are concerned about playing with players who are hacking, I encourage you to play exclusively with friends by utilizing the party or private match options in Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4 to avoid such players as much as possible until this issue is resolved by Sony.
At this time, we do not have the ability to restore or adjust individual stats.
Let me assure you, while we are very reliant on Sony updating their firmware and security to address the core problem of this issue. We are looking at EVERY option available to us to help any user affected.
This only applies to legacy games such as Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2. In the future we plan to adjust our approach to not rely solely on platform security and reduce the ability for this to happen in our games, as has already been displayed by the work Treyarch has done on Call of Duty: Black Ops to prevent similar measures.
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 19 Jan 2011 3:04
