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IRC chat log of PSN hackers

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31–40 of 45 posts

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#31
post #28

"#define rand() 4" Pure genius -- fool the hackers by making your "random" number static, they'll never guess! Now that PSN users are actually seeing money ciphered from their debit accounts, it's only a matter of minutes until the class action lawyers are all over this.

From the context, this appears to be a joke (see http://xkcd.com/221/), not a serious accusation.

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#32
post #28

"#define rand() 4" Pure genius -- fool the hackers by making your "random" number static, they'll never guess! Now that PSN users are actually seeing money ciphered from their debit accounts, it's only a matter of minutes until the class action lawyers are all over this.

From the context, this appears to be a joke (see http://xkcd.com/221/ ), not a serious accusation.

It's also a reference to when the PS3 was first cracked, which was possible because they weren't really using random numbers to generate keys.

So yes, it is a serious accusation that points out their consistently lax programming techniques when it comes to security.

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#34

Could someone please provide a précis?

well that's just pretentious.

I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. it bugs me when people intentionally use relatively obscure words to make themselves sound important.

also, what happened to the edit option?

edit: apparently I can edit this comment, but not the other one. can we not edit comments that have negative karma now?

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well that's just pretentious.

I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. it bugs me when people intentionally use relatively obscure words to make themselves sound important. also, what happened to the edit option? edit: apparently I can edit this comment, but not the other one. can we not edit comments that have negative karma now?

In my experience, most people who use "relatively obscure words" are doing it to provide a precise nuance, not to "sound important". What's the point of accumulating a large vocabulary through years of reading if you eschew certain words as being "pretentious"?

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the context, this appears to be a joke (see http://xkcd.com/221/ ), not a serious accusation.

It's also a reference to when the PS3 was first cracked, which was possible because they weren't really using random numbers to generate keys. So yes, it is a serious accusation that points out their consistently lax programming techniques when it comes to security.

No.

The problem was that one of the parameters they used in their ECDSA signatures, k, was the same at least once. This allowed the key to be computed with simple math, but the generation of the key itself was not the issue.

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well that's just pretentious.

I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. it bugs me when people intentionally use relatively obscure words to make themselves sound important. also, what happened to the edit option? edit: apparently I can edit this comment, but not the other one. can we not edit comments that have negative karma now?

You can only edit comments written in the last hour or two.

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. it bugs me when people intentionally use relatively obscure words to make themselves sound important. also, what happened to the edit option? edit: apparently I can edit this comment, but not the other one. can we not edit comments that have negative karma now?

In my experience, most people who use "relatively obscure words" are doing it to provide a precise nuance, not to "sound important". What's the point of accumulating a large vocabulary through years of reading if you eschew certain words as being "pretentious"?

Can you explain how "a summary" would have failed to convey the same level of precision as "a précis" gives?

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#39
post #25
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please there is no reason to use words that most people here don't know. Plenty of people who frequent HN are non native speakers of English. To save others the trouble, calpaterson asked for a resume .

Jesus, now that we're done with all the pointless bickering about language, could someone provide a Zusammenfassung? I skimmed it, and saw nichts interessantes.

Here are the important claims made in the logs:

* They have "decrypted all PSN functions."

* Sony spies on basically everything PS-related (hardware plugged in, games played, etc.) and uploads it. There are "independent checks" and history wipers, etc. don't work. This may only happen when the device is networked. They can detect backups, piracy, etc.

* It sends CC data, etc. via SSL, but leaves unencrypted logs on the HD that contain that data in the URLs visited. It may not have used SSL at all at launch.

* You can modify a few things when you download something from the PSN store to tell it that you should be getting the game for free.

* Sony monitors all messages sent over PSN, may be searching that for keywords.

* Has a big list of censor words that lives on your HD. Checks this list on receipt of a message, not sending. Easy to bypass now.

* Various worries about people creating spam apps with this data.

* Comments indicating that Sony is running old Apache servers with known vulnerabilities internally.

Watching this, I'm glad I don't have a PS3.

Re: IRC chat log of PSN hackers

#40
post #18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please there is no reason to use words that most people here don't know. Plenty of people who frequent HN are non native speakers of English. To save others the trouble, calpaterson asked for a resume .

Actually, neither précis nor résumé is native English. They are French, and in French they mean "summary".

"Résumé" does mean summary, but "précis" merely means "precise" in day-to-day French. Using it when you mean "summary" is incredibly old fashioned and a bit pompous; most people wouldn't even understand what you mean.
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