For Now, 3.42 Update Brings End to PS3 Jailbreak

After ‘hackers’ managed to enable jailbreaking on the PS3, Sony has released an update today which patches the system and, for now at least, prevents any jailbreaking.

While Sony hasn’t officially confirmed that the update removes the jailbreaking, the BBC is reporting that it has in fact closed the hole, with Sony telling the BBC that “we will continue to take necessary actions to both hardware and software to protect the intellectual content provided on the PlayStation 3.”

A member of the PSGroove jailbreak team, Mathieu Hervais, told the BBC that it was “safer not to update” as users wanted to keep the unofficial software. This means however, that users will not be able to connect to the PlayStation Network, or use any online features.

The original tool was a paid-for dongle called PSJailbreak which enabled users to play pirated games from the console’s hard drives as well as install unofficial homebrew software. Shortly after that was put on sale, an open source version called PSGroove was released which enabled homebrew software to run in the system, but has since been altered to enable the use of pirated games.

Sony has already blocked the sale of the memory stick (PSJailbreak) in Australia, but as the BBC notes, a software block through an system update is more immediate. This will probably spark an arms race similar to one iPhone jailbreakers have with Apple.

We all knew this would happen eventually, the question is only how long it will take for the jailbreakers to fight back. I imagine that they’re already working out how Sony managed to block the jailbreak, although when talking to the BBC Hervais said he didn’t yet know.