It has always been a cat and mouse relationship between hackers (or attackers according to FrSIRT) and Sony. And by cat and mouse by no means do we refer to Tom and Jerry, but the carnage that is Itchy and Scratchy and the nasty ways they've figured out to hurt or in this case outwit one another.

Take the case of DevHook. Some time in August the developer received a Cease and Desist Order from Sony that lead to the site's shutdown. But that little stint only caused developers to get even. Hence, the release of numerous downdaters/downgraders. While others like DreaDNoughT took the more comical approach by releasing a satirical game called Hackers vs Sony.

When FrSIRT reported that "A vulnerability has been identified in Sony PSP, which could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary commands," it's like music to hackers' ears. We can only speculate that this urged Sony to take the defensive and release v2.81, with a v2.81 ad flashing across their site. However, it is so far only available in Europe as the US site still has v2.80 on their System Update page. Even the Sony's Official Japanese site doesn't have this release.

QJ Forum members have been so kind as to try and download the World Tour Soccer 2 with hopes that it's bundled in the game, but the experiment only confirmed that it is not coupled with the game. If you want to go see it for yourself you can bypass the YourPSP registration by entering in your PSP's serial number and putting "SB" at the front instead of the other letters you have, and by entering PSP-1003 as the code.

Which can only lead us to speculate, wait and speculate some more on what Sony is up to. At this point, we can only give you a friendly reminder: If you still want to play your homebrew, do not upgrade.

Since Scratchy has made his move, aren't you the least bit curious what Itchy will do?

Discuss: [Forum Thread]

The French Security Incident Response Team has flagged the new libtiff exploit. Apparently the exploit, which hasn't been fully implemented yet, is already a target for Sony. With news like this, expect to see a firmware 2.81 within the next two weeks. This is the text, as written on the English page.

"Technical Description

A vulnerability has been identified in Sony PSP, which could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary commands. This flaw is due to an error in the Photo Viewer when handling malformed TIFF images using libTIFF, which could be exploited by attackers to compromise a vulnerable device by tricking a user into opening a malicious image."

Trends such as this have been seen before, with the 1.5 KXploit release. 3 weeks later, we were handed 1.51. And then, after the original photo exploit in 2.0, it was only two and a half weeks before 2.1 came out. And with the 2.5/2.6 downgrader came 2.7. And now a 2.8. This is sad news, but we can urge all of you: If you want to use homebrew and you think it's too late since you have 2.8 already, DO NOT UPGRADE. When a 2.81 comes out, you can bet work will continue on hacking the original 2.8.

EXTRA: The FrSIRT page has a references list, and guess who's on it? That's right, QJ. A thread in the Developers Dungeon was added to the research and reference list that contributed to the decision to raise the risk level.