Despite PlayStation Home having only been open to the public for a matter of days there’s already claims that hackers have invaded its virtual space and managed to tamper with some of the built-in advertising boards.
The claim stems from a hacker named StreetskaterFu, who via his blog reveals that a number of vulnerabilities in the existing code have enabled him to replace posters, exchange current trailers to custom ones and play his own music.
A video, which was uploaded to You Tube, showed how StreetskaterFu had edited posters, but Sony has allegedly been quick to step in and remove the footage and will apparently be working swiftly to release a patch to prevent further exploitation.
PS3 Hax.net has taken things a stage further by offering a guide on how to hack PlayStation Home, bolstered by some videos of what it’s so far managed to achieve. Sony won’t be overly concerned just yet, as the current hack only allows aesthetic changes to be made on local machines, but it will certainly must be a concern that security wasn’t made tighter before opening the servers to the public.
As StreetskaterFU states on his blog:
“SONY f****d it really up! First they delay HOME for more than a year, then they delay it a few times again and again till finally we have a HOME beta on a technical standard from 2005 with crappy graphics, a few boring areas and many many many many many many many many bugs.
It’s a bit surprising just how weak the security is, especially considering the competitive pressures and the existing knowledge of how to build secure client/server applications. So far it sounds like basic enterprise development techniques would have removed these risks.”