F-Secure bricks a PSP on camera
By Ryan Block 
posted October 20th 2005 11:05AM
posted October 20th 2005 11:05AM
If you were ever curious as to exactly what was entailed in a PSP-bricking (for the uninitiated, that's when running
some code that kills your PSP entirely), famed antivirus company F-Secure
(who we
hope you
should well
know by now) plunked down the $250 to do an on-camera
bricking, for, um, educational purposes. It's not pretty. In fact, you may want to shield their eyes if you've got
children (or gamers) in the room. The lesson to learn here? Always use protection, kids—never run unverified arbitrary
code.
Watch [14MB WMV]
I laughed. I cried. I give it two thumbs up.
Anybody else curious as to what that flash of text actually said?
I'm not so curious as to try mind you, but curious nonetheless
That was great. Although I would have gladly taken that PSP and sent it to Sony to have it fixed. :P
Dear God!
I hope someone will come along and sell me a product to protect my PSP from arbitrary code from third parties. I wonder if F-Secure knows of anyone planning on doing that?
Does anyone know the source of the verb brick? Did it come about with the PSPs or before that? Wikipedia yielded nothing.
the text says something like "team xploit has F*cked your psp." it was on pspupdates.com a while ago, search there. My friend bricked his psp this way - I laughed so hard i cried, i told him not to run it but he did it anyway.
We use the word "bricked" because saying that something was "paper-weighted" doesn't roll off the tongue as well. It is a "brick" because now does nothing but sit there.
#13
from what i can see, it seems to read:
PSP XX 2.0 Exploits back the 2.0 firmware
Thank's to XX for the 2.0 exploit :)
(XX = unreadable)
the amount of psp's i had to brick to get that...
If there were tons of games to play on the PSP then we wouldnt have this problem because people wouldnt be bothered to fucking around with homebrew and old ROMS.
I hear about tons of DS games everday but all I ever hear about for the PSP is Wipeout and GTA (which isnt even out yet).
Is there no way to access the drive directly and put the system files back? I mean, if it's a brick you might as well take it apart and play with it...
NOOOOOO!!!
What's next? A DS bricking video?
What a lame attempt at a publicity stunt. Yeah it was interesting, but they obviously did it to draw attention to their little "research" firm.
Notice that clear sheild in front of the PSP? I think this is an amazing precaution.. God forbid if the PSP exploded as it was bricked. LOL In a way I kind of wished that happened, that would have been cool!
f-secure is by no means "little"
Oh man, #17 that was hilarious. but yeah I couldn't figure out what the XX's were either.
Here's a screencap for all those trying to figure out what it says. Good luck.
http://img474.imageshack.us/img474/2885/pspbrick7to.jpg
I'll see you PSP bricking video, and raise you one PSP smashing video:
http://mga.sorobangeeks.com//news_pics/133/psp_cassee.mpg
today is crying fanboy day. :)X
How anticlimatic. I was expecting something like.
"PWN3D J00 STUP1D N00BZ LOL!!!111ELEVEN - Love, PSPhaxx0r" or something.
Not.... "Thanks to some guy for the exploit", makes it look more like someone POOCHED A DOWNGRADER and released it anyway.
Hmmmm.
is it posible that sony might have realeased that program? it would make me less inclined to downgrade.
The next time [engadget] wants to do test and films then send me the PSP and i'll do it for you. :D
Please Im desperate for one, and have no money.
The text:
PSP IDEA 2.0 Exploit Hack the 2.0 firmware
Thanks to [illegible, maybe toa2r4o] for the 2.0 exploit :)
i am a spammer: sales@thego2spot.com
That certainly was thrilling. I want 3 minutes and 20 seconds of my life back.
Now...thats Amazing...bricking a PSP, whats next? Ipod?
Anyone else getting Sharper Image flash adds in the top left of their browser on Engadget? Using Firefox so I don't think I've been spywareowned.
Goddammit! STOP USING WINDOWS MEDIA TO MAKE VIDEOS!
Man, this is seriously low...espcially who work their asses off to get hold of a PSP, well good thing I stay away from Homebrew, i recently got a White PSP and I dont wana White Brick thanks!
got psp model p-1000 with fw 1.5 original from sony, japan. no restriction was set to emulators, no need to downgrade, but want to get updated and then this happens (had not heard about cause owned it just for five days) now i send email to sony to get this fixed cause i did not do something illegal, i was using a "computer" which damages after upgrading fw. no, i read some threads and i guess it will be not hard to fix it cause afaik sony repairs it for money to european users ... so it seems to be a additional income for them ... but this is only cool for them not needing too much time for one... so my idea is that it boot ups and shortly accesses the memory stick. perhaps theres a way to get known what it looks for and places a boot bin/rom there which loads up a dump back to bios and, additional installs current fw. what do you think about? let me here, how far is the way done to this? every day more and more get bricked and more and more are working on that, so tell me ur experiences. i got a jap psp, have a 1.5 and 1.0 japanese dump, elf files and some ideas to script but until now coding is not my favourite so i just start up and guess out in the world are so many real crazy programming guys that this should be fixed within days??? what we are living on ONE planet if we do not help us? ;)