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Comment by watty | Hacker News Reader

This is a huge stretch. So all a hacker has to do is break into Sony's update servers, create a signed hacked boot loader that automatically starts a MiTM attack on home users? Wouldn't it be easier to break into Google servers and install a malicious Chrome update?

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This is a huge stretch.

It's the type of thing that's been done before.

So all a hacker has to do is [1] break into Sony's update servers, [2] create a signed hacked boot loader that automatically [3] starts a MiTM attack on home users?

Yup. Sony appears to be saying that 1 has happened with malicious intent. I believe 2 has been done by console hackers with not-necessarily-evil intent, at least as a proof-of-concept. 3 exists as portable C code.

Alternatively, the bad guys might just want to use their PS3s as the world's largest DDoS platform.

*Wouldn't it be easier to break into Google servers and install a malicious Chrome update?

I doubt it, Google's security is usually pretty good. Even still, that's something that would probably be easier to uninstall.

I wrote a blog post about this with more info at http://extendedsubset.com/?p=47

There are lots of tools to make MITM easy. And it's not exactly rocket science, if you want to write one yourself. And the signing keys have already been published, right? So the only difficult part is breaking into PSN dev channel. You wouldn't necessarily have to hack the server that distributes bootloaders, maybe you could just impersonate another dev and submit a few changes to their existing app. When users are playing the "new version" of that game, your code goes to town.

I doubt it. Google takes security seriously and has a superb security team. Sony... doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to this.

The difference is that if a ps3 gets hacked, the hack can prevent you from removing it thus causing the need for new hardware. Opse.

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