Phantom patch raises some questions.....

So lets start way back on the 12th of april. A writer from PSJ (PlayStationJunkies.co.uk) booted up his Homefront game and got a patch prompt 1.03, no big deal, right... So the patch downloaded and installed. He then started the game and headed for multiplayer and in his playlist he found some strange things. Somehow it seems he had developer access to new maps, private game servers and a multitude of other new content. When he entered games he was alone on every map and every mode, very strange indeed!

[RememberThe357]

Damn thats hella interesting. It raises questions about when Sony knew they had an issue with their network.

[M-Easy]

No it just proves what all Homefront gamers already knew. That the gamespy servers & Kaos ran terrible netcode.

[Alex Kidd]

Aparently hackers were able to get onto the developers network using Rebug on CFW where developers files etc are located.

Somehow they managed to find an old build of the 1.3 patch, meant just for developers and testing purposes, then uploaded it to the update server.

I wonder what else was on the developers network and if Sony would be still rebuilding the PSN servers even if all the personal info wasn't stolen due to the intrusion into the developers network.

[Max_Dissatisfaction]

Do you draw a salary or do you do what you do for the love of SONY? I just have to ask

[rockleex]

Game updates are separate from Sony's PSN servers from what I can tell.

Although PSN was down, I was still able to update the new Mortal Kombat game.

This must be specific to Homefront. Just like how the MW2 hacks worked.

[rockleex]

When I say game updates, I meant game patches.

Because a game like COD or Uncharted 2 can update their in-game playlists or whatever without any patches.

So yes, when I put in Mortal Kombat for the first time I was prompted to download a patch update for Mortal Kombat WHILE the PSN was offline.

[Ray186]

Sony has some explaining to do. It's one thing to do a mea culpa. Another thing to outright lie about when you discovered that the PSN had been compromised.

[stevenhiggster]

Thing is though, they maybe didnt know at that point. I mean people had been hacking MW2 for ages, but they didnt do anything to any other part of PSN, just that one game. This might just have been specific to Homefront.
How am I to know though, just a thought.

[Ray186]

I understand what you are saying, but you would have to agree that at this point transparency in their actions would have been the best way to go?

Though I can understand that after thinking about how the different Online entertainment divisions are setup, that maybe its the left hand not knowing what the right hand is up too.

Maybe a whole consolidation of all online divisions would be in order. It might actually bring prices across borders more into line.

[radphil]

Ray how does the implementations on 1 game say that the network is hacked? How would anyone immediately come to that conclusion.

How would that work also in the sense of MW being hacked on all the platforms? Would that mean that all networks across all platforms were at security risk?

[Ray186]

Bad choice choosing MW2 as an example as any hacks done were because of IW refusing to lock their game saves. Those hacks were achieved by saving their game saves to notepad and then re-uploading them back to their console of choice.

Not a true Hack, but a MOD, available to anyone with a PC, or console.

[Supman]

um...thats werid

[Prototype]

Why are they waiting till NOW to say something and not back then when it happend?

[Max_Dissatisfaction]

Story would HAVE been buried along with the multitude of lesser stories during the huge psn debacle coverage. My guess.
I capsed HAVE because for some reason people write would of instead of would have...it irks me, I find it very irksome

[mastiffchild]

So do I, Max, so do I. The use of "would of" when it's "would have" is, in every way, bloody irksome. I also hate when , in a league table in sports, the team in second wins a game making their points total get closer(but still behind) to the top teams total and a commentator says they "closed the gap" when they didn't. All they did was NARROW the effin gap.

Thing is,I do things wrong all the time as well but those two, dunno why, always get on my moobs.

[cyclonus007]

Rebug was custom firmware released on March 31 that gave people the ability to turn their system into a dev kit. From there, people learned it could be modified into giving access to the developer network. Days later, rumors were spreading about using Rebug to get free stuff from the PSN Store, since developers can choose what stuff is made free. PSN gets shut down a few days after that.

It's not strange to think that Sony knew about this exploit and was working to patch it like the other custom firmware (this is probably the "known vulnerability" Sony mentioned to the press last week). However before they could stop it, someone found their way into the proper PSN and was messing around inside. All of this happened in a matter of 3 weeks.

[cyclindk]

"Hackers" my a$$. All it takes is one person internally leaking shi! and anyone can get into their systems and fukc around. Shi! needs to simply be monitored 24/7 and all entries authenticated manually. At least the ones which allow access to vital areas especially the ones which allow the dissemination of PATCHES and the like to users for god's sake. Retarded security measures, really...

[SwampCroc]

Interesting theory... I remember seeing reports of this on the Homefront forums before the real 1.03 patch came out and before PSN went down....

If I recall correctly it was a decent amount of european players reporting they had downloaded 1.03 as soon as they loaded up the game...(you know how it automatically updates) and others around the world weren't reporting any patch updates... I remember it clearly, I was all over the Homefront forums... I actually like MP it's pretty fun.. not the most beautiful game but it plays pretty nice... when it worked.. who knows now that PSN has been down..

but yeah.. I never thought of it back then... people just thought it was being tested in certain regions or it got accidentally released... but this could explain maybe something. or if anything raises more questions.

[earbus]

The plot thickens sniff cover up.

[barnes_almighty]

i just wanted to reply to one of the above posts, you are right in your thoughts that games have their own patch servers, but patches are only released there after sony ok it from their own personal QA. THQ told me that the 1.03 was leaked through sony's QA. they even stated this on their homefront forum. its all a bit weird.

[Tyre]

This all started after the PS3 was hacked...we never had any problems before that...what's so cool about this mmmm strange...weird...spooky. F$#k all this mumbojumbo. We buying gamers got screwed by the hackers and the pirates...by attacking Sony(for what exactly? justifying pirating games? stop this homebrew argument cause it's a lie...Sony was working on making their eco system open to the developers all across the board) We have nothing to gain from this useless pathetic struggle against Sony, Wake up gamers...stop looking at this with ur biased custom firmware eyes. We have nothing to gain from these attacks...it's just irresponsible from these hackers. If they are continuing these attacks and PSN will be down again they are not only shooting themselves in the foot but they will be taking the whole industry down with em including us. This is going nowhere and is pure easy destroying and obstructing with no justifiable cause from the start instead of contributing and building: we call that 'vandalism'.

[SwampCroc]

correction.... this happened before the public was aware of any said "HACK"... Sony might have known they were under attack... But, "WE" the public did not know at the time this Homefront issue originally appeared.... Because I was constantly loading up the game trying to get the update that people were reporting that they received....

PSN was up during this time... PSN went down a few days to a week after the mysterious Homefront Patch 1.03. And even then after like 4 days of people reporting the fake 1.03.. THQ released the real 1.03... I know the real one if is out... it came out after the reports of the fake 1.03 and the real 1.03 came out before PSN went down...

believe me... if you had bought or borrowed or played Homefront than you would know it had plenty of "Online Issues" so there was chatter about it everywhere... The forums blew up.... Twitter and FB... Shit I'm pretty sure at one point Kaos/THQ were getting death threats from people... and the fake 1.03 was just another hiccup after people had been already waiting 2 weeks for Homefront to fix their shit.... and than they told everyone that had the fake 1.03 to delete the files and start from scratch installing everything... and than the real 1.03 patch comes out... and than boom PSN goes down....

I dunno... but that's how it went down... I couldn't play cuz of freezing issues and patchs and than I finally get the new patch and can play then PSN goes down.

[TardcoreGamer]

Do you suspect it was the North Koreans who were behind the breach?

[SwampCroc]

nah... not that... I was just saying how it happened....

you can't deny that PSN was up when the Homefront issue first happened...

I was playing the fucking game Online... so I know that PSN went down after the 1.03 patch was released.

hah disagree troll