Hacker News Reader

Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

> This project is intended for educational and security research purposes only. It does not endorse piracy, unauthorized access, or misuse of commercial devices.

Sure, "education". Releasing exploits for software vulnerabilities has very little to do with education. The relation to piracy is clear however.

View on HN

The irony of posting something like this on HACKER News of all places must have escaped you... this term is tightly related to breaking hardware/software systems apart to understand them and it is very common to share your findings.

What people decide to do with them is on them, and fixing the exploits would be on the manufacturer if they care about this so-called "piracy".

The main use case is here is not understanding. It's software piracy. When hacking game consoles, understanding is just a fig leaf.

> fixing the exploits would be on the manufacturer

That's what responsible disclosure is for.

Tough luck, I will run my non-piracy related homebrews on the hardware I own, and learn about the way they work now.

> That's what responsible disclosure is for.

Good one, the maximum bounty for PlayStation is $50k for critical ones. But on average they only pay $10k for such "bugs"... as a reminder in 2025 the Sony's PlayStation (Game & Network Services) segment generated approximately $30,000,000,000. Talk about a "fig leaf".

Responsible disclosure is called that because it is responsible, not because it necessarily pays well. Even without any bug bounty, irresponsible disclosure remains irresponsible.

irresponsible of what? allowing people use the hardware they own as they wish?

There is no inherent duty to protect someone else's secrets outside specific obligations (e.g. state secrets). Sharing knowledge is not inherently irresponsible, whether or not a bug bounty exists.

You'll have to do better than hide behind the term "responsible" to force people to stop sharing knowledge about something they have bought and own.

Pirates don't usually bother hacking consoles. It's easier for them to just bypass the security on the disc drive. That's why we had "mod chips" for decades

>It's easier for them to just bypass the security on the disc drive.

This is just not true.

So why did they drill holes into the Xbox 360's DVD drive when they could've just hacked the hypervisor all along? :)

We are talking about PS5 here.

The PS5 has had modchips for decades?

I'm pretty sure my original comment both specifying a timeframe longer than the PS5 has existed and hardware that never was produced for the PS5 would suggest I was talking about other devices

"It's easier for them to just bypass the security on the disc drive" is a statement about the present, and as such it is false.

"That's why we had "mod chips" for decades"

See when you only take half of something someone said, then run off with it and draw incorrect conclusions. You sound foolish

I mean this in the kindest possible way: Xbox 360 launched over twenty years ago; modchips on Xbox/Playstations haven't been a thing for... a good while now.

Yes. And that's why I said "decades". Unfortunately the person replying did not realize I was speaking in a historical context

Are you against accessing hardware that you own?

Only if the main use case is piracy.

who died and made you the arbitrator of deciding the "main use case"

Don't clog the liability sink pls

Reply on news.ycombinator.com