With Sony’s PS3 security snafu exposed, it was only a matter of time before a custom firmware surfaced. And that it has, as PSFreedom creator/developer KaKaRoTo releases the first-ever custom firmware for PS3.

Keep in mind, it’s a rough proof of concept right now. It comes in the form of a patch file that can permanently enable the “Install Package Files” submenu on any firmware, including 3.55. This also comes with the added benefit of no longer having to insert a dongle each time before boot.

Above is a video that showcases a firmware 3.55 unit with full access to homebrew. For the complete release notes straight from KaKaRoTo’s blog (which is currently down due to heavy traffic), hit the break.

Great news!

Thanks to the tools made by the fail0verflow team (and thanks to sven in particular for his work on the pkg/unpkg tools), the first “Custom Firmware” is now available for the PS3!

I see a lot of questions coming up really fast on my Twitter account, so here are the basic things you need to know :

Because of legal/copyright issues, I will not provide the custom firmware to anyone, however, I’ve made available all the tools necessary to transform an Official firmware update, into a custom one, just grab my ps3utils repository from github, compile, then run :

./create_cfw.sh PS3UPDATE.PUP CFW.PUP
This will take the official firmware, unpack it, modify it, then repack it correctly (requires you to install ps3tools).

This requires Linux of course, but I’m sure others will do it for the masses and illegally release those files somewhere.

The advantage here is that you can do it for any firmware, if you want to keep version 3.41, then give it the 3.41 update, if you are on 3.55 already and can’t downgrade, then run the script on the official 3.55 firmware and it will create a modified 3.55 firmware.

You can put the file in a USB drive under the filename “PS3/UPDATE/PS3UPDAT.PUP” and then go to system update in the XMB, and it will allow you to install the update (even if you’re already on 3.55).

People are asking what are the features of this firmware, it’s simple, all it does is to add those “Install Package Files” options to the Game section of the XMB. It doesn’t do anything else!

This firmware will not allow you to run the currently available homebrew application. Once the homebrew developers re-package their files in a ‘retail’ .pkg format with signed executable, then it will work (this should be coming soon thanks to the work of the fail0verflow team).

Since the kernel is left unmodified, this means that this custom firmware is really meant for future homebrew installation, and it will not allow piracy. I plan on keeping it that way.

This is just the first attempt at custom firmware, and it only contains a minor modification to allow you to install pkg files directly, eventually we’ll get some more options added to it in the future. This is just starting to get interesting!

Enjoy!
KaKaRoTo

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