Sony battles hackers over hijacked games
Hackers have cracked piracy protections on Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Portable in the United States, the latest chapter in the company's battle to block unauthorized game use on its new hand-held device.
The world's top maker of video game consoles rolled out a downloadable fix for the software flaw that opened the door for the latest attack by hackers, who quickly cracked the original version of the PSP shortly after its release in Japan late last year. In their latest move, hackers have enabled PSP users to download some games from pirate Web sites onto removable memory sticks and then to insert the games to run on the PSP.
Currently available titles include "Mercury," Ubisoft's "Lumines," "Coded Arms" from Konami, Taito Corp.'s "Puzzle Bobble" and Sony's own "Intelligent License," according to gaming Web sites.
The new game duplicating trick works on the PSP's 1.5 version firmware, which serves as the PSP operating system. The PSP was released in the U.S. in March with the 1.5 version firmware.
