PlayStation 3 hacking challenge ends; winner: no one

It looks like there weren't any hackers l33t enough to meet the "0wn a PS3 and own it" challenge, wherein a modified PlayStation 3 was up for grabs to anyone who could replace a specified JPG image without violating the site rules disallowing your run-of-the-mill DoS attacks, etc. That means the tricked out PS3 featuring a 160GB hard drive, HDMI cable, Fedora Linux pre-installed, and a free game isn't going anywhere, losers! Fortunately for the PS3-less masses, you probably won't have too much trouble picking one up without resorting to beefing up your mad hax0r skillz.

[Jody @ Jan 7th 2007 3:23AM]

Well if you don't need it, I guess I could take it off your hands. No big deal. Let me know,

-Jody-

[Geoff @ Jan 7th 2007 4:00AM]

I guess the challenge organizers didn't get the memo:

Noone wants the PS3. NO. ONE. ESPECIALLY not l33t h2x0rz...

[tiuk @ Jan 7th 2007 4:06AM]

For what it's worth, I was at Walmart today to pick up my girlfriend, and while I was killing time I saw a bunch of PS3s (probably 3-5, possibly more). I think anyone who wants one can get one fairly easily now.

[gaurav @ Jan 7th 2007 4:08AM]

my friend said he was gonna try, hes fairly experience but everytime i told him to go try he was to lazy, there wasnt either much awareness of this or no one really cared

[brian @ Jan 7th 2007 4:11AM]

maybe your just more full proof than you gave yourselves credit for, haha.

[Geoff @ Jan 7th 2007 4:11AM]

Oops. I meant *31337 h4x0r5*.

Anywayz, it's conclusive now: PS3 5ux d0nk3y d1x. It's UNCOOL. NOBODY WANTS IT.

Props to the PS3 fanboys (aka: SONY suits)! Your console's DOA trash! Peace-out, 'aight? 'AIGHT?!

[brian @ Jan 7th 2007 4:12AM]

maybe your just more full proof than you gave yourselves credit for, haha.

[xVariable @ Jan 7th 2007 4:18AM]

Exactly, coz... only a FOOL would have bothered or
cared! *zing*! (pause for laughter and applause......) Apparently people were smarter than the organizers expected... *ba-dump-bump*rimshot*! Thankyou,
thankyou! You're too kind! (...pause for laughter and applause...)

[Brian @ Jan 7th 2007 4:59AM]

Who cares about sony pos3 when you can buy a 360 with over one hundred games, hi-def movie downloads, and the soon to be announced IPTV?

PS3 is to seventh gen gaming systems as Sega Saturn is to fifth gen gaming systems

[xVariable @ Jan 7th 2007 5:01AM]

Coz if there'd been any takers, it would have been "proof" of "fools", get it? Get i... aw, forget it.

[jack @ Jan 7th 2007 6:28AM]

When do nintendo fanboys have the time to play with their wii? Seems to me like they spend all their free time looking for ps3 posts to comment "no one wants it!" or "I just saw some ps3 at walmart". Funny, if you love the wii so much go PLAY it!
By the way, I just got a wii, it is nice to have as something different. Now, I just need me some ps3 goodness to complete my rig.

[SporkRocker @ Jan 7th 2007 11:27AM]

"Funny, if you love the wii so much go PLAY it!" It may be, that they are out of shape, and the wii has them collapsing from exhaustion.

[Kxpuc @ Jan 9th 2007 4:37PM]

It's not the Wii or 360 people making all these coments it's the Wii60 people (their name for themselfs not mine)

[Andrew Stone @ Jan 7th 2007 11:15AM]

Yeah guys, go play with your wiis.

[Holosoth @ Jan 7th 2007 12:47PM]

No hacker is dumb enough to take this challenge. It's a trap. Even though he challenges you to hack it, he does not give you permission anywhere to access his server. This is a common ploy to get cash from hackers.

[Tech^Cellfish @ Jan 7th 2007 12:49PM]

If it was a M$ Playstation 3 we would already have a winner

[JWRIGHT @ Jan 7th 2007 3:01PM]

Actually, this was a fairly difficult task. It was running Fedora Core 5, and only three ports were open. I forget what the third was (I don't think it was useful though), but the other two were 80 (for the site, unusable because its only one-way) and the SSH2 port, which is really (REALLY) hard to crack without the root password. The guy who set this up knew what he was doing (he closed all unnecessary ports and was up to date with patches and bug fixes), and was probably fairly certain that he was going to keep his PS3. It would have been easier to actually steal the thing than replace that picture. If anything, this proves how secure Linux is when properly configured. And no, I am not a Linux fanboy.

[some person @ Jan 7th 2007 5:29PM]

it was only an image contest?

[sean @ Jan 7th 2007 8:15PM]

Yeah portscan on it didn't help much, and if he was putting it out there to be hacked he probably used a really strong password. Probably had blowfish for SSH encryption which is stupid hard to crack, if he were smart he would have a max login attempt of like 3 per IP and / or 3 per minute, so brute forcing is out, if he had all known exploits patched on it then what else can you do? For a no knowledge attack it would be really, really, really hard to do. I won't go so far as to say it's impossible, but if configured properly it might as well be.

BTW, OpenBSD is a lot more secure in general than linux. And don't go telling me "OMG YOU CAN MAKE LINUX JUST AS SAFE" because by defualt, it is not as paranoid in security as a BSD, esp. OpenBSD.

But most of us don't really have much on our servers that it's worth someone spending hours trying to crack them. If they got my box, they could get a few finished torrents, some mp3s, and some misc. backup tars.

Still, my auth.log shows that there are tons of retards that run dictionary attacks through ssh anyways. I could just change the default port so it wouldn't get scanned, but they're not getting in anyway and even if they do I don't really care, so security isn't that huge of a concern for me. All my important stuff is in various locations that are not on a computer.

[Shyam @ Jan 8th 2007 2:23AM]

I am not l337 enough, i emailed the site designer my picture asking for his pay pal account, i was to pay him 10 to put my picture up, he said if it was that easy for him he would have done it him self.

[Chris @ Jan 8th 2007 6:44PM]

I was at walmart today I there were two PS3s just sitting there. If you want one don't be surprised if there is on sitting at your local walmart.

[shadow @ Jan 8th 2007 9:50PM]

Don not trouble about that .It was running Fedora Core 5, and only three ports were open. But if this is true ,you must take attention to it.

[Kwipper @ Jan 9th 2007 3:08AM]

The problem is that nobody cared enough to hack the PS3, just like nobody cares enough about a mac to make viruses for it.

[haX0r @ Aug 24th 2008 7:24PM]

nice