How to hack your PS3

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Crax

UPDATE:
Step 2 is no longer needed, provided that you use a newer version of the backup managers mentioned in step 3.

First I would like to make the following statement:

  • I don’t condone the use of pirated video games. Support those that makes the games. Use this hack to run homebrew and your own legitimate backups.
  • Hacking your PS3 might be illegal at your choice of location.
  • I am in no way, shape or form responsible for what you do with your machine.
  • Continue on your own risk, and have fun.

Now when we have that out of the way this is what you need to pull this off:

  1. PS3, fat or slim doesn’t matter.
  2. USB drive with at least 180MB free space.

Step 1 – Update the firmware
First, make sure that you have the 3.55 original firmware (ofw) installed on your machine. This hack might work with other firmwares but I haven’t tested that myself so I give no guarantees. Now let’s download a prepatched (you could do it yourself, if you google it you will most likely find help on how to do this) 3.55 custom firmware (cfw) by kmeaw (there are other cfws like GeoHot’s, google for it if you want to try it instead), start off with downloading this file (mirrors). Unpack the RAR file and you will find a file called PS3UPDAT.PUP, create the following folder structure on the USB drive /PS3/UPDATE/ and copy the PS3UPDATE.PUP file to that location.

Put the USB drive in the PS3 and do an update via XMB. If you for some reason get an error that says something like “You already have the latest firmware installed” you will have to do this in recovery mode (read this). If the update was a success, go to step 2.

Step 2 – Installing the patch
Next we need to install something called a lv2 patch on our PS3. This patch needs to be run, once every reboot, before starting any of the backup managers for them to work properly. The lv2 patch is a package file and is installed via XMB. Download the lv2 patch here. Simply put this in the root of the USB drive and select Install Package in the menu on the PS3.

Step 3 – Installing backup managers
The backup manager is the software that allows you to start your homebrew and/or backuped games. I have a favorite manager called MultiMan (v1.13.04) (base package, mega package or another mega package if you use another firmware than the one I linked to such as GeoHot’s). Simply put the pkg file on the root of the USB drive and install it from the Install package in the menu.
Other backup managers that I think are worth to mention are:
Gaia Manager, the latest version (v2.04) doesn’t require to run the lv2 patch before running the manager. Download here.
Rogero Manager (v7.9b) for kmeaw (normal version, stealth version), other firmware (normal version, stealth version). If you play online, use the stealth version to lower the risk of your account being banned, don’t use this as a 100% guarantee that you will be safe though. The kmeaw version has the lv2 patch included so there’s no need to run that beforehand, I don’t know if that’s the case for the other one.

Step 4 – Using backup managers
All of the backup managers linked to above comes with a built-in ftp server which allows you to upload and download files directly to your PS3. To do this you need an FTP client such as FileZilla or whatever floats your boat, I personally use FTPRush which recently has become freeware. When you have started the backup manager of your choice you should see an IP address (e.g. 192.168.0.199) on the screen. This is the unique address to your PS3. Open up your FTP client and connect to that address, leave the port as 21 (default FTP port), select anonymous login and if possible uncheck Passive mode and/or passive transfers. If successful you should see some folders and especially one called dev_hdd0 this is the internal hard drive of the PS3, inside that one you’ll find a bunch of other folders but most importantly GAMES, GAMEZ and/or BRRips depending on where you told the backup manager to look for games.

Backup a game by starting the manager, insert the game disc, select it in the game menu and choose backup in the manager. This might take a while, depending on what game you are backuping, so sit back and relax and drink some coffee or something. To run a game from the manager, first make sure that you have any original PS3 game in the slot, then simply select it in the list and press X (if you’re using MultiMan, answer “No” when asked if you want to start the game from within the manager. That rarely works). After a few seconds you should return to XMB, now in the game menu browse until you find the disc icon. Then start the game as normal. This should work, if it doesn’t there might be some special procedure that has to be done for that specific game, try to google for it. You can also try running the game from another backup manager.

If you experience any problems let me know and I’ll try to help you out.

Posted in Uncategorized | 28 Comments

Server side fix for SSL mixed content warning

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Crax

The problem
Let’s say that I have a web server running a secure site (it’s using https, or SSL if you prefer). On this page I have an embedded Youtube video, and since Youtube doesn’t have https support it will use the unencrypted http instead. Why should this be a problem? Well for some people it isn’t a problem, but if you (for some strange reason) use Internet Explorer you will get a warning saying that the website contains mixed content and may not be secure. Of course, this warning could be a good thing, but 99,5% of the time it’s just a pain in the ass and might scare off your visitors or hide information you want them to see.

Solution
This solution is for Apache web servers but you can most likely do something similar for IIS using ISAPI_Rewrite.
First off, make sure that your Youtube links are stripped of the “http://” part. So your link should look like this “www.youtube.com/v/wRE4KCPKXhs” (without the quotation marks). What this means is that when your page tries to embed the Youtube video you web server will look after a local folder called “www.youtube.com/v/wRE4KCPKXhs”, which I guess that you don’t really have. But don’t worry we’re going to fix that.
In the root of your website open (or create) the file .htaccess (don’t forget the initial dot) and type in these rows:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule www.youtube.com/(.*) http://www.youtube.com/$1 [L]

This will tell your web server that when a user looks for the folder www.youtube.com/(anything) it will instead locally redirect them to http://www.youtube.com/(anything) but for the viewer it will look as if it came directly from your page and therefore bypass the mixed content warning that Internet Explorer gives.

I have so far only tested this on Internet Explorer 7 and 8, so I don’t know about how well it works with Internet Explorer 6 or 9 (but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work).

Another problem I’ve seen that causes this warning is when you use “javascript:void(0)” in your code, unfortunately I have no solution for this except rewriting your JavaScript.

Good luck, and feel free to post comments or questions below.

RewriteRule (.*).amung.us/(.*) http://$1.amung.us/$2 [L]
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Once you go Droid…

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Crax

…you’ve filled that void.

Just sitting here trying some applications, feel free to give suggestions in the comments section.

This post was written on my new HTC Legend with the word press application.

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Is it OK to loot a pirate?

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Crax

When I read the news today I found something (the article is in Swedish) that gave me both a little chuckle and todays “WTF moment”. It looks as if a Swedish company (that I’ve never heard of) called Sandryds Handel registered The Pirate Bay‘s logotype as their own. They even decided to keep the name below the ship, but for some reason they wrote it as “Piratebay” instead of “The Pirate Bay” as it usually looks like. The news article made it look as if the old TPB crew was crying because someone hade stolen their logotype, since I know how the Swedish media likes to twist the story I went to the real source, Peter Sunde’s blog, and read the other side of the story.

There are actually some quite interesting parts in Peter’s blog post. For instance the story about when Fredrik Neij sent an email to the Swedish Patent and Registration Office (patent- och registreringsverket, PRV), asking how he would go on to make a complaint in the interest of the public, he received an answer within a few minutes. Not from the PRV though, but from a Swedish journalist working for Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio, SR) with a complete copy of his original mail.

Another thing to read about in Peter’s blog post is the fact that they doesn’t seem at all upset that someone tries to use their logotype, since it is supposed to be public domain. The problem as they see it, is that a third party can register a logotype that has been in the spotlight for about five years as their own which basically means that no one but that third party is allowed to use said logotype, unless given permission.

I’m pretty sure that all Sandryds Handel will get from this whole thing in the end is some free media space.

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What a fscking day

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Crax

I know it’s been a while (it’s almost funny that almost all my post feels like they start out like this) but I’ve been so damn busy it’s not even remotely funny.

I left my home last night to spend the night at a friends place, since he and his girlfriend lives a hell of a lot closer to the railroad station than I do. So far so good, I’ve stayed there over night a few times before and they’re always very helpful. So yesterday was a good day. Then I got to bed, woke up and it was as close to “the day from hell” that you could possibly imagine.

First of all, I woke up around 5 a.m. and my train would leave  my home town at 6:38 so I wasn’t in any kind of hurry. I took my computer with me and left for the train, as soon as I came to the station I noticed that I’d left ID-card, credit cards and my booking number for my tickets at home. Luckily I have my trusty Nokia 5800 so I got online and fetched the number from my email account. The only thing bugging me now was that I was on my way to Stockholm with only 250 SEK in cash, and no way to identify myself if needed.

I got my tickets and got on the train and found my seat. After sitting there for about 5 minutes a lady shows up and says that I’m sitting in her seat. Of course I’m thinking that she just got the wrong seat and we take a look at our tickets. That’s when I see it, my ticket isn’t for today, it’s for tomorrow! This of course sucks ass since I have to be in Stockholm at around 8-9 a.m. and I’m thinking “Well, at least this day can’t get any worse”, of course, I was wrong. Luckily though I got all the way on my non valid ticket.

At the Stockholm office I call up the train company to try to rebook my return ticket for today instead of tomorrow. The (very nice) lady on the phone tells me that I need to get to the station in Stockholm to rebook it since I’ve already picked it up (when I left my home town this morning). Unfortunately there wasn’t any time for this the whole day so I decided to book a new ticket home. Said and done, I ordered a new ticket for the same time as my faulty ticket for tomorrow, but for today and the day went on.

Our meeting did of course take longer than expected (they somehow always do) and after having to jog to the station I noticed that ALL the ticket machines were out of order, another nice lady from the train company told me that I had to go over to their customer service and get my ticket there. By now my train is leaving in about four minutes and there are at least ten people standing in line before me.

I wait my turn, get my ticket, runs like hell (Usain Bolt’s got nothing on me) out to the left, down the stairs, to the left, up the stairs, on the platform jumps on the train just about three seconds before the doors closes and the train leaves the station.

Well that’s a short summary of my day. I’m just wondering what’s going to happen next… So far I’ve gotten out of every single thing this day has thrown at me, but sooner or later I’m bound to miss something.

Over and out, I’ll try to write more often.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The American media industry sunk the pirate ship

Posted on April 17, 2009 by Crax

At 11 am (CET) today we got the news that some of us had heard last night got verified with the release of the verdict from tingsrätten (the district court) or as Peter Sunde likes to call it, tärningsrätten (the dice court) since no one understands how they rule (they might as well just throw a couple of dice). The two founders (Neij and Svartholm Warg) of the pirate bay, their spokesperson (Sunde) and one of their old webhotel/ISP owner and former employer of Neij (Lundström) got sentenced to one year behind bars and ordered to pay about 30 million SEK (about $3.5 million) to different companies in the media industry for damages.

While I’m not a user of the pirate bay myself I still find it strange that they got convicted for promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws, when these “other people” haven’t even been charged with a crime. Charging someone that simply has a public service is like charging Smith & Wesson every time someone gets shot with a weapon they produced, or charging car makers when someone breaks the law while using a car. Maybe that’s in the future, it wouldn’t surprise me if that worked in the states though?

I don’t think that pirating copyrighted materials should be legal, but neither do I think that one download equals one less purchase. How would the media industry then survive if most of us just started to buy our media second hand. Then they would just get money from the first ones that bought the media, maybe they would make it illegal to resell our old stuff without paying them some (50%?) of the price we sold their (hmm, shouldn’t it be ours since we bought it?) media for.

Well, since IPRED now is a law here in Sweden I’m really hesitant to buy more stuff from these corporations and I’m thinking about boycotting cinema, DVD’s, CD’s, conserts and so on for at least the rest of the year and only buy stuff second hand if I want anything really special. But if more of us did that it probably wouldn’t be long before we got a new law from the American media industry forcing everyone to buy at least one movie, record and see at least one movie in the cinemas each month or else we get sued.

And IPRED is really a potential cash cow for everyone, just write a song, make short film or anything else you find interesting. Then you upload it yourself to any torrent site, let’s say the pirate bay for this example. Wait until you get some other seeders, quit your seeding and start logging everyone that uploads and downloads your stuff. Then you go to your district court and show them your proofs of copyright infringement. Since no one can prove that you uploaded the torrent you can just sue all those filthy thieves for a couple of hundred thousand dollars and see the cash roll in to your bank account.

Sources:
Aftonbladet
Aftonbladet
Aftonbladet
Expressen
Expressen
IDG.se
IDG.se
And about a million more webpages around the interwebs.

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An under the hood upgrade

Posted on March 30, 2009 by Crax

I felt the need to put in a bit more RAM on the server. Earlier it was barely hanging on with it’s 1GB of old PC3200 memory. So i took and threw in another 1,5GB and now it seems rather happy, lets just hope it stays that way. My other computer running Vista x64 was starting to show off the same symptoms so I went and bought 8GB (4x2GB) PC6400 and now that too works as it should. No problems with the overclocked CPU either, the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6750 (2,66GHz) that now runs at 3,20GHz is still going on strong and has no heat problems at all. But I’m thinking about maybe upgrading it to a Core 2 Quad in the future.

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Dissection of Star Pilots – Higher

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Crax

This morning on my way to work I heard Star Pilots – Higher on the radio. And then it just hit me that the lyrics in that song is just snatched from a bunch of other songs. So look below for the dissection of the song and where I believe they got their lyrics from.

The songs lyrics are on the left and the “source” on the right:

Chorus
‘Cause tonight I’m gonna take you higher This could be from a number of songs but I decided to go with Scooter – We take you higher
Can you feel the heat is on? Glenn Frey – The heat is on
Yeah tonight I’m gonna take you higher Same source as the first line
‘Til the end of time Justin Timberlake – Until the end of time
Verse 1
Take a chance on the edge of life ABBA – Take a chance on me and Sylver – The edge of life
Keep trading passion for glory Survivor – Eye of the tiger (at about 1:12)
You’re coming on like a hurricane Neil Young – Like a hurricane or possibly Scorpions – Rock you Like a Hurricane
With no surrender in sight Bruce Springsteen – No surrender
Verse 2
Play the game moving straight ahead Queen – Play the game and Kool and the gang – Straight ahead
It will cut you like a knife Bryan Adams – Cuts like a knife
I will give you the sky Tony Roberts – I give you the sky
Baby its now or never Elvis Presley – It’s now or never
Another chorus
Verse 3
Running free like a ball of dust Iron maiden – Running free and Celldweller – Circle of dust?
I’m living day by day Yolanda Adams – Day by day
Just take my hand, run away with me Dido – Take my hand or simply Shane Piasecki – Run away with me which contains both parts
We can dance the night away Van Halen – Dance the night away
Verse 4
Somewhere out on the borderline Madonna – Borderline
We’ll try to make ends meet Crazy Lixx – Make ends meet or maybe Den Harrow – Make ends meet
I will give you the sky
Baby it’s now or never		 Same as the last time

After that it’s pretty much the same lines i’ve taken care of here but with a few twists here and there for the rest of the song.

If you’re a die hard fan of Star Pilots please don’t take this post seriously, I just had some fun with it. And I’m pretty sure that it’s possible to do the same thing with pretty much any song.

Over and out

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Long time no see

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Crax

Hey folks! It’s been over a month since my last post. Sorry I’ve been kind of busy. However here’s a quick summary of the last month.

  • I’ve been on a diet and lost almost 10kg (about 22lb), but I still have to lose about the same amount to reach my goal.
  • I’ve started to build my arcade machine, or at least I’ve made a temporary arcade controller with an old cardboard box until I have the hardware to build the entire machine.
  • I bought Skate 2 for the Xbox 360. That game has been taking up most of my free time at nights.
  • I’ve also been working with my projects and much more.

I’ve also bought some other cool stuff, but that will have to wait until another post.

And by the way, if you haven’t read up about the pirate bay trial do so right now, it’s probably the most hilarious thing ever, you can’t even make that stuff up. On one side we have the pirate bay, 2 real nerds (TiAMO and Anakata), their press spokesman (Brokep) and some businessman who helped them out with bandwidth and so on. And on the other side we have the district attorney and the attorneys for the media industry. Here’s what’s so damn funny about this trial, the DA and the attorneys have absolutely no clue about how the internet works, they don’t know the difference between a bit and a byte and they keep bringing up questions about completely irrelevant stuff. Having followed this “trial” for a whole week now I’ve come to the conclusion that Sweden really needs an IT court that only handles these kinds of cases where the lawyers are competent and know how stuff work before they come in to the court room. I don’t know how many times I heard “I know nothing about technical stuff” from the those who asking the questions. Tell me this, how do the corporations think when they send attorneys without any knowledge of the Internet to a trial against a site like the pirate bay? The whole thing is a mess.

For now, over and out.

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Hacker attempt

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Crax

This morning I noticed that some skiddie was trying to hack my blog, with some known security flaws from previous versions of WordPress. Needless to say, (s)he didn’t have much luck with it. The skiddie’s IP (94.247.3.38) goes to a proxy in Latvia, so I can’t get any further than that at this point. But what I can do is to block that IP from accessing my server in the future. So if any of you out there get disturbing requests on your pages, block the IP mentioned above, and you will have one less problem to worry about.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 1 Comment