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Unsurprisingly, George 'GeoHot' Hotz has Some Thoughts About this Whole PSN Hacking Thing

The kid who cracked the PlayStation 3's security is not shocked to learn someone else hacked the PlayStation Network.

As the news blogs and social media feeds continue to swell to the point of bursting with vitriolic, sarcastic, and generally unkind words regarding the compromising of the PlayStation Network and the bona fide communications catastrophe that has since followed, we of The Internet have waited with bated breath for words from George "GeoHot" Hotz, that lovable, firmware-hacking rapscallion whose fairly public and unpleasant legal battle with Sony over said PS3 hackery more or less set off all this nonsense.

 Hackers, meet your bed-headed messiah.
 Hackers, meet your bed-headed messiah.
Now, Hotz's deepest, most personal thoughts have come down from on high (via his blog), and perhaps unsurprisingly, he sees this issue as primarily the fault of Sony executives and their particular brand of hubris in dealing with the hacker community at large.

"The fault lies with the executives," wrote Hotz, "who declared a war on hackers, laughed at the idea of people penetrating the fortress that once was Sony, whined incessantly about piracy, and kept hiring more lawyers when they really needed to hire good security experts. Alienating the hacker community is not a good idea."

On the subject of the current issue and its ramifications for the personal identities of a whole bunch of PlayStation 3 owners, Hotz expressed a sort of defiant sympathy. "Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool, hacking into someone elses server and stealing databases of user info is not cool. You make the hacking community look bad, even if it is aimed at douches like Sony."

== TEASER ==Hotz, who recently settled his civil suit with Sony over his hacked firmware chicanery, also distanced himself directly from the whole episode. "I'm not crazy, and would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door," he stated. Anonymous, the Super Mega Awesome Hacking Club who previously responded to Sony's legal chest-beating by threatening to use Sony executives' personal email addresses to sign up for Craigslist erotic service ads, have also claimed to not be directly involved in this personal info thievery.

Hotz closed with a message to the hackers involved in the PSN breach, imploring them not to be "dicks" and referring to Sony as "noobs" without a hint of identifiable irony.

"To the perpetrator, two things. You are clearly talented and will have plenty of money(or a jail sentence and bankruptcy) coming to you in the future. Don't be a dick and sell people's information. And I'd love to see a write up on how it all went down...lord knows we'll never get that from Sony, noobs probably had the password set to '4' or something. I mean, at least it was randomly generated."
Alex Navarro on Google+

266 Comments

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AlexW00d

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Edited By AlexW00d
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ds8k

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Edited By ds8k

Here I thought the Giant Bomb community was an intelligent group of people. Guess I was wrong. I had a credit card number attached to my PSN and I'm not mad at the hackers; I'm mad at Sony. They flexed their lawyers and acted all big and bad. Now they're paying the price.


How quickly consumers forgive and forget. Remember the rootkit debacle? Of course you don't. To be quite honest I'm glad this happened. Maybe Sony will learn something when their stocks have plummeted in to the abyss and nobody is interested in the PlayStation 4. Seriously? Plaintext?
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CL60

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Edited By CL60
@supermike6 said:

" To me, he seems like a pretty cool guy. Don't see why everyone is blaming him for what has happened; it's quite clear that even if his actions indirectly inspired these attacks, it's more Sony's fault than it is his. "

Because despite what they think, this board is full of fanboys and immature people. The glory days of this community are long gone. It's just like any other board now.    
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EVO

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Edited By EVO
@Mechabolic said:
" Hotz's original plan was just to bring back OtherOS to the ps3 "
If I'm not mistaken, it was punks like Hotz jailbreaking the PS3 that led to OtherOS being patched out in the first place.
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KaosAngel

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Edited By KaosAngel
@OtakuGamer: Wouldn't it be wiser to blame Sony for not using 256-bit encryption as their standard?  Both Valve and Microsoft have stated they use 256-bit encryption due to people's information being very valuable and they can't risk it being lost.  Sony used some shitty encryption for everyone's private data...so isn't the onus on Sony?
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Fallen189

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Edited By Fallen189
@KaosAngel said:
" @OtakuGamer said:
" Who gives a shit about his opinion? His just some fucking deadbeat who thinks it’s cool to fuck everyone else over. "
....you say that but the FBI and NSA do the same thing to American citizens.  Are they "fucking deadbeats" too?   "
The only thing that differentiates those two groups are 3 letter acronyms
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Karkarov

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Edited By Karkarov

How nice, an elitist snob posted an opinion relating to an issue he helped cause.  I am glad he is happy some dumb ass stole millions of peoples personal info.  Sony I implore you, use the legal staff you hired instead of this bottom feeding retard to put him away for an extremely long time.  Then find the people who breached your security and put them away until they die.

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deactivated-61f31c6da0e7f

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@Tesla: is that a hackers reference I see?! :)
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WickedCestus

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Edited By WickedCestus

To me, he seems like a pretty cool guy. Don't see why everyone is blaming him for what has happened; it's quite clear that even if his actions indirectly inspired these attacks, it's more Sony's fault than it is his.

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KaosAngel

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Edited By KaosAngel
@OtakuGamer said:
" Who gives a shit about his opinion? His just some fucking deadbeat who thinks it’s cool to fuck everyone else over. "
....you say that but the FBI and NSA do the same thing to American citizens.  Are they "fucking deadbeats" too?  
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fox01313

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Edited By fox01313

Wonder if once they follow the breadcrumbs back to who did this to PSN, that person(s) got tons of the info on how to break into the PS3/PSN from the info that GeoHot put up on the net in the first place.

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MikkaQ

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Edited By MikkaQ
@ryanwho said:
" @Mesoian said:
" @ryanwho: ...wha? He's not wanted anymore. The whole thing regarding his involvement is over. "
Then why does his hair look like that? "
Because hackers don't have time for a comb. Too busy dealing with "noobs".
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HarrySound

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Edited By HarrySound

Well he's a smart kid for sure but Sony are only trying to make a busniess work.

They struggle as it is and they don't need people like this.
It's interesting but why did he release the code on the internet for everyone.
Jobs are at risk.
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Agent47

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Edited By Agent47
@ViciousReiven: Both?
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shinluis

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Edited By shinluis

Wow. Never seen his picture before. I'm impressed that he actually is a little kid.

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CarpetRemnant

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Edited By CarpetRemnant

To be fair he's right...to a degree. A portion of the blame does surely lie with Sony's frankly baffling corporate culture. This is the same company that said people would get a second job to get a PS3, they mean well but they just succeed in winding up the wrong people.

The rest of the blame obviously lies with the cuntweasels that perpetrated this network breach, I am sure they can be traced by tracking orders for XXXXXXXXL Utilikilts.
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twillfast

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Edited By twillfast
@bonorbitz said:

" Shit, Sony and I shared the same password?! "

Well I should be safe, 'cause mine's 6.

Edit: I shouldn't have told you that, should I?
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Mechabolic

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Edited By Mechabolic
@AlexW00d: Granted, he is kind of a prick, I don't think the whole fault should be blamed on him.  That would be like blaming Oliver Winchester for a shooting that would happen next week.  Hotz's original plan was just to bring back OtherOS to the ps3 but there will always be people that will try to exploit new technologies.  Still, it doesn't help Hotz's case when he pretty much said "Give me a job, I broke yo s**t Sony!" on his website.
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benjaebe

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Edited By benjaebe

Initially I was annoyed to see more about Geohot, but Alex's writing always makes me laugh.

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andygazi

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Edited By andygazi

I would have preferred him to rap this instead of blogging it.  But interesting info.  I kinda agree with his points.  Also love to see a writeup n how they did it.

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xanavi

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Edited By xanavi

Nice xkcd reference there.

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CL60

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Edited By CL60

I love how everybody in this topic is calling him a dick among other things.. did you even read what he said? Nothing he said at all makes him a dick.

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ryanwho

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Edited By ryanwho
@wibby: You'd have to be a fool not to follow this guy's life huh. Skin like tissue paper, this forum. I'm sending all of you giftbaskets with Vicodin in them so next time someone gets a trivial fact wrong you wont blow a gasket.
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MeierTheRed

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Edited By MeierTheRed

Some one needs to hire him!!!! no, just no... some one needs to kick his face in. Thats pretty much all there is to it.


And damn George, you actually pulled of looking worse than a dude dressed up to look like a Hobbit.
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Vexxan

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Edited By Vexxan

HACK THE PLANET

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Zicdab

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Edited By Zicdab

I don't think this needed to be posted.

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august

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Edited By august
@AlexW00d said:
" @KaosAngel: Well considering they did it by using dev firmware, it probably was his fault. "
Source?
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KaosAngel

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Edited By KaosAngel
@Punk1984: George's initial break that he did with a TEAM, helped create the program that loaded the developer ID onto public PS3s.  After that was found out in Feb, the cryptologists who did the real hacking started their stuff.  George did create the initial crack, but he didn't do it alone.  People fail to realize George is being singled out due to being a public figure....and 99.9% of the people who do hacking use real code names that keeps them safe from everyone but the FBI and NSA.

If people even bothered to read the fucking logs from PartyVan IRC in Feb, they'd realized this shit started back then and it was done by some of the smartest hackers in the States.  
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Krakn3Dfx

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Edited By Krakn3Dfx

It's too bad one of the stipulations in the settlement wasn't that George Hotz would stop talking.

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gamefreak9

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Edited By gamefreak9
@KaosAngel: 
It's really not as hard as your describing, and no you don't need to be smart, its an acquired skill, though you better learn pretty fast or from an expert because if your not an expert quickly, they will catch you. Also you need to know where to get your gadgets + hardware

source: friend is a hacker
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AlexW00d

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Edited By AlexW00d
@KaosAngel: Well considering they did it by using dev firmware, it probably was his fault.
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ffdthree

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Edited By ffdthree
@5socks5: I'm glad i'm not the only one that has at least a level of respect for him.
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wibby

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Edited By wibby
@ryanwho: no he isn't' you damn fool
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kennybaese

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Edited By kennybaese

I'm mostly annoyed because I have to change a shit ton of passwords and my goddamn credit card numbers because of this stuff, so I hope if and when Sony or whoever finds out who broke into my personal information they fucking bury them. 


Also, as great as his name is, this guy is an ass. Hackers in general tend to be elitist asses. Seriously, vote with your dollar don't fuck people who aren't crazy like you are. Seriously. 
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Punk1984

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Edited By Punk1984
@KaosAngel: Do we know if the hack was started on a Custom Firmware PS3? Or was that just BS?
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ViciousReiven

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Edited By ViciousReiven
@Blueman said:
" Smug little prick. "
You mean Sony right?
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MolluskLingers

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Edited By MolluskLingers

why give this idiot any newsspace

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craigbo180

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Edited By craigbo180

I wanted him to respond in the form of rap.

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RIDEBIRD

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Edited By RIDEBIRD
@TheVeteran13: HACK DÄ PLANEE

Awesome.
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ASpaceSeaman

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Edited By ASpaceSeaman

I realize this isn't the most proper opinion, but I actually sorta like the guy. He understands that stealing Personal Info. isn't cool, and I can tell he's still sorta pissed that Sony isn't smart enough to hire hackers (he actually asked Sony for a job after the settlement). I can see why he'd have an attitude at this point but is smart enough to realize this isn't exactly a nice situation.


@ryanwho said:
" Holtz is wanted and he's still blogging. What a dumbass. "
I'm sorry but do you have any idea of what the fuck is going on?
Hotz made a settlement with Sony. He's not allowed to hack the PS3 anymore and he'll go on free. That's all.

@zombie_bigdaddy said:
" who cares? "
People with PS3s that want to see their rights protected or that want to know what a hacker who originally broke the door down on the PS3 thinks of this whole problem.

@KaosAngel: I'm glad some people know what they're talking about.
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ffdthree

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Edited By ffdthree

I think I like this guy

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HeadNodShy

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Edited By HeadNodShy
@ryanwho: Wanted by whom?
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zitosilva

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Edited By zitosilva
@Tesla said:
" Hack the planet! "
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TadThuggish

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Edited By TadThuggish

On his side till he said "noob".

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Alex_Carrillo

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Edited By Alex_Carrillo

Eugh. Go away, neckbeard.

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Olivaw

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Edited By Olivaw
@Tesla: HACK THE GIBSON
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deactivated-63bbfc9f777ec

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It's funnier in german
  

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s-a-n-JR

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Edited By s-a-n-JR

Call me crazy, but I think this guy doesn't like Sony.