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Comment by cosarara97 | Hacker News Reader

Current PS3 versions can't be hacked, at least without hardware mods. I wonder if that's because they are actually flawless, or just there is nobody trying (or people who do try don't publish what they find). It nevertheless sounds funny to me that the PS4 can be hacked while the PS3 can't.

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No system is actually flawless. That's pretty much impossible. It's far more likely the latter.

Apart from what acomjean mentioned already (which is definitely an influence), the ROI on such a hack is pretty low. The PS4 was released 3-4 years ago and the PS3 was discontinued anywhere from 1-3 years ago, both depending on your region. In any case, it's an old system and people have moved on to newer and shinier consoles.

The PS3 has also had hardware-less exploits in the past, CFWs were all the rage. It's not like it's never been exploited or anything. The ECDSA private key used for signing software was released, even.

Probably easier to hack the ps4 since the ps4 is x86 based and the ps3 is powerpc and there are just a lot more people with some knowledge of x86 systems.

In the case of the PS3 I believe its mainly a case of effort VS reward. The older firmwares are completely broken, the chances of Sony making a mistake that big a second time are low. I think developers in the console scene would rather do a hardware downgrade to a firmware that gives them complete control of the system and patch newer software to run on it as necessary instead of wasting time looking for a new exploit that might not be there.

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