Sony is engaged in a tug-of-war with hackers who keep cracking its PlayStation Portable software to unlock the device and run their own applications on it.
The company is preparing another update to the PSP firmware to fix a recently disclosed bug that lets hackers downgrade the PSP system software and run their own, so-called homebrew code on the device, a Sony representative said Thursday.
"It is not...what the device was designed for," said Patrick Seybold, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment America. "We plan to deal with this issue with the next system update." He declined to say when that update would be ready.
Soon after Sony released the PSP earlier this year, hackers started hunting for bugs in the software that runs the device. Flaws were found and used to run homegrown applications, such as a PDF reader and an FTP client, on the device. The bugs were not used to attack PSP users.
Sony last month updated the PSP firmware to version 2.0. The update encompassed new features, including a Web browser, but also fixed the flaws that had been exploited by the hackers. The 2.0 update was made available on Sony's Web site and will be included in new PSP games, which will require the update, Seybold said.
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