The Bricking Issues
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For a while PS3News had been editing Team M33's firmware and removing the credits, they did this to re brand the firmware and make out that they had created it, this of course pissed Team M33 off and they had to protect their firmware from some shitty tactics by PS3News, when PS3News edited the CFW, they caused it to brick hundreds of PSP's, PS3News also stole the source code of Dark_Alex's OE Firmware, doxed him and released personal information of various scene developers, here are some quotes from various websites regarding the matter.
Post's About The Brick
Apperently, the admin of the ps3 news site had a long history of taking other peoples work and modifying the credits to make it look as though he had been the one who had created it. When he started doing the same with team m33's firmware realeases, they used some kind of encryption on their latest custom firmware which would cause the data written to the psp's flash chip to become corrupted causing the psp to "brick". Team m33 included a warning with the custom firmware which stated that the firmware would brick the psp if the code was modified in any way, but the admin of ps3news ignored that, removed the warning, and changed the credits anyway. Well, it wasn't long before people started complaining about their bricked psp's, but the admin did nothing about it and even left the modified firmware up on the site for 24 hours knowing full well that people were killing their psp and even going so far as deleting warnings and rants from pissed off people from the forums. That's the jist of it I guess.
On August 19, 2007, Team M33 released the third edition of 3.52 M33, 3.52 M33-3. Changes are added to this firmware, which includes: USB access to flash2 and flash3, added processor speeds 75 and 133, added vshmenu which can be used to dump UMDs or access other storage areas from recovery or by pressing menu on XMB, added support for UMD video ISOs, added support for popsloader 3.30. This update included a mechanism to cause the PSP to brick during updating if it detected the update had been modified, this was done in retaliation to the website ps3news rebranding the custom firmware releases as their own work. The website ps3news kept the bricking update on their website for more than 24 hours while censoring forum comments reporting bricked PSPs caused by the modified update.
A quote from Dark_Alex
Streak, despite i was attacked by that page, i contacted that page and we made some kind of "no agression" pact. They have been violating that pact lots of times, even now that I left the scene, they do it even more. The have been putting recently my supossed name in his page, some times with initials, but the other day he posted it fully. What do they think they achieve by putting my real name? I really don't mind that, they cannot even probe is me or just the paypal owner. But they do it like trying to act as a "mafia" so sony can see the names of authors. They did same when Noobz released 3.03 HEN+downgrader, they put the ip of fanjita. They don't only not have respect for homebrew authors, but they put them in danger. As for me, neither spanish police nor Sony needs a retard administrator of a loosers page to put my name, they have their own means to find me, much more efective than visiting a paypal address, so i cannot care less about them showing that name. IF someone from my environment know who i am, i will receive congrats because i have done no evil. It would be different if the name and address of the administrator of that page were leaked. He would actually be in physical danger, because he has not stopped of annoying developers from several years. He plays with fire, too bad for him, fire burns. As you can see, there is nothing it can be done against that guy violating homebrew coders rights, so i see fair that coders are fighting them in dirty way to protect themselves or other coders. It is useless to talk to them, they still continue doing same things they have been done for years. I regret to have talked to them that time, it was the worst loose of time i have ever done. And i regret too not to have done the same in OE.
They have been ripping off the work of people like D_A for a long time now. They would change the credits, making it seem like they were responsible for the CFW. In 3.51 M33, the installer made a hash check, and since PS3News edited the installer, it was no longer the same, and would then brick the PSP. People who downloaded the PS3News version of M33 now had bricked PSPs. Outraged, they posted on the forums and the PS3News admin just deleted the comments and left the bricker up for like another day or two.
A quote from M33
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As for yankee paranoids, a little word about the "brickers" issue.
We repeat it again: THERE IS NO MALICIOUS CODE inside M33.
Some of the files of this update are protected by encryption schemes to protect ourselves
from that page that annoys homebrew developers.
The keys for the decryption: the own update file.
So if the file is changed, the decrypted data is not the original one, and this causes the
wrong data to be written. There is no way you can call this malicious code as there is no explicit
code to brick nothing, it is the corruption of the update what actually causes the bad decrypted
data to be written.
Anyways in this update we check if decrypted data is wrong and in that case we write a recovery
warning the user what happened. It will activate usb, and it will allow you to execute a recovery
eboot.pbp... in a curious path ("ms0:/PSP/GAME/PS3NEWS_ARE_STEALERS_I_AM_NOT_GONNA_VISIT_THEM/EBOOT.PBP")
which is not at sight of an hex editor
If you visited ps3news and bricked in last release, then blame his administrator.
He is the one that modified the files and had them in the server for lots of hours
knowing the consequences.
As this person doesn't care about publishing homebrew coders personal info because he thinks he's
funny and hursh doing that, we dont think he will mind either that we "leak" his data
After all is nformation that can be obtained publically.
Administrator of ps3news: D***** S******, owner of old ps2ownz domain (now he uses a reg. proxy),
and name to which advertisements are CURRENTLY payed in ps3news. (it could be either him or his father)
Location (maybe old): *** ******** ** *******, ** ***** (***)
Password: _D*****_S******_BRICKED_HIS_ASS_BY_M33_
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fuck ps3news. i remember when that site was fucking around with DAX's works. they're credit stealing, re-rarring, readme changing bitches. DAX/M33/WildCard=Legend Ps3news/Ps2news=Booger pickin' cousin fuckers
-hex editeted M33's 3.52 M33 #3 update resulting in a brick if launched. -posted a bunch of peoples personnal info (IP's, names, adresses etc..) such as fanjita (1 of the eloader devs), Dark_aleX and some other people -leaked wildcards 3.40 LE source code -messed with some maxconsole accounts scum of the earth they are.
Even more disturbing, was a custom firmware that the Russian hacking Team M33 released. This firmware contained a message slamming PS3NEWS for their activities, but little did PS3NEWS know that it was a Trojan horse in deices. After PS3NEWS removed this message the firmware turned into "auto-brick" mode and bricked many of their users PSP consoles. Although, the morality of this tactic might come into question it would of never happened if PS3NEWS wouldn't of participated in stealing and releasing the CFW source code and also fell back to their normal activities of altering scene programs without the consent of their authors. Most of this information has remained internal, but with the unveiling of my blog various prominent members of the Sony PSP scene have approached me with valuable information to expose PS3NEWS's blatant attack on the PSP scene for monetary gain. After talking with various members of the PSP development scene I'd like to sum of what happened. First and foremost, after Dark_Alex's alleged retreat from the public PSP scene a group of coders named Team Wildcard started to reverse engineer the 3.40OE CFW in hopes they could deliver their own version. Impressed by their progress they were given the opportunity to get their hands on the original source code via Dark_Alex's consent. A few days later a member of Team Wildcard noticed that their internal forums had been comprised and were leaked onto PS3NEWS's website. In anger a Team Member of Team Wildcard posted on PS3NEWS calling them out. Furious with these posts and the fact Mr. S****** decided to leak all of Team Wildcard's source code from their SVN. They posted this on their front page. Outraged as this action Team Wildcard decided the only way to combat the amount of traffic PS3NEWS was getting from this tragic event was to release the source code themselves and to public-ally accuse PS3NEWS of stealing their work. How did PS3NEWS come to obtain the necessary information to compromise Team Wildcard's forums? The answer is Maxconsole. After an internal investigation into the matter Team Wildcard learned that the account information used to access their forums was supplied to PS3NEWS via a leak in Maxconsole. However, the nature of the leak is questionable. More then likely someone accessed the account information of one of the Wildcard users and obtained his password which sadly was the same one he used in the internal forums. Who could of done such a thing? Well, Team Wildcard speculates it's Paradox who are in league with PS3NEWS and have been since they called themselves PS2OWNZ. Well, things didn't end here. Due to the fact that PS3NEWS stole internal material that compromised the development (at that time) of the most commonly used custom firmware for the Sony PSP the Russian hacking Team M33 released a new version of the firmware that contained a negative message and the personal contact information for Mr. S****** the person mainly responsible for the release and promotion of the stolen sou recode. In a dire attempt to save his sites reputation he had his coders alter the message contained in the firmware, but this backfired on him because the firmware was programmed to brick PSP's if the message was altered. Due to Mr. S******'s illegal activities hundreds of his website visitors had their PSP's broken. What is even more distrubing about this is the fact that the M33 Firmware, which humoresly needs to be unzipped using the password "_M33_Hate_And_Ban_Leakers_And_Thieves_333_" came with a warning if you're PC's or PSP's web browser cache contained PS3NEWS's site that your PSP would be bricked. Also, Mr. S****** hex edited the EBOOT file and removed the text about PS3NEWS. By doing this the EBOOT turns into self destruct mode and bricks your PSP. It gets worse. After people reported that the firmware Mr. S****** altered was bricking their Sony PSP's he deleted the posts or edited them to hide the fact what he had done. Below is a picture of the original TEXT in the file and an excerpt from the M33 Firmware.
ps2ownz/ps3news response
The identities and location of Dark_AleX and those behind M33/Wildcard (approximately 16 individuals) are known and will be included in the harassment charges to be filed with the proper authorities, and all Web sites who continue publishing this personal data and/or files containing this data leading to the continued harassment will also be cited with direct links to the offending material hosted on your servers used as evidence. Should anything malicious beyond harassing phone calls happen to the owner of PS2Ownz or his family as a result, criminal conspiracy among other charges will be filed in addition to harassment against all parties involved. This is no longer a game, as you are now jeopardizing the life and well-being of an individual and his family. With that being stated, for those not involved in this horrific situation our Forums are now reopened with the exception of the PSP Forum which will remain closed along with New Registrations until further notice. Although nobody can change the past, we will be doing everything in our power to ensure the future of PS3News.com and see that ALL news/releases are being reported properly from this point forward. PS3News Staff For the time being our Forums are turned OFF. This is at the owner's request of former Web site PS2Ownz (which is the predecessor of where we reside today). Apparently what happened is M33 released a file which contains his personal data, and at this time we are kindly asking other Web sites to remove this information so that the harassment stops. Respected PSP sceners including Dark_AleX have been in favor of this personal data attack, but their addresses and other personal info have NOT been published and we would like to end the bickering right now versus allowing it to escalate even further. If this is acceptable then we will completely purge our Forums of all past releases and related posts, and only link to their official Web sites with their official releases from this time onward giving them full credit and donations as they wish. If it is not acceptable then our only choice will be to defend ourselves by doing what was done to the PS2Ownz owner which we do not wish to be done to anyone. Please contact us (Dark_AleX, M33, Wildcard) if you would like to end this now and we will reply to you ASAP... if we do not hear from you in a reasonable amount of time (next day or two) then we will be forced into defending ourselves I guess.
Update: Dark_AleX, M33, and Wildcard have now publically responded stating they do not intend to stop harassing the owner of PS2Ownz and his family as long as the PS3News Web site is online. First and formost, PS3News.com is a news site and will never be taken offline due to threats made by terrorists regardless of what personal information is published. Secondly, as a result of some irresponsible Web masters failing to comply and remove the personal data the owner of PS2Ownz has already received numerous phone calls ranging from Kansas to California with each number being documented as a harassment occurrence.
Present Day
ps2ownz became ps3news, which became ps4news then became psxhax, which it remains as of this date 25th June 2017.
The same owner has remained the entire time and is the same shitty person, Mr S****** the site owner, has continued to do the same thing throughout his entire time in the scene.
- Stolen News.
- Fake News.
- Clickbait News.
- Staff Members Of PSXHaX Dox Members.
- Banning Members For Silly Reasons.
One should do the smart thing and boycott the website.