PS3 [GUIDE] How to install Custom firmware on your PS3 in 2023

NiQ said:
You should be careful with CoD specifically. Everything before BO2 should be safe. BO2 / BO3, AW and possibly later titles in the franchise are notoriously known for actively scanning the console for files associated with common homebrew and reporting to PSN, resulting in a ban the moment you click the online play option in the game menu. Even reverting to OFW does not always help since the game can detect residual files, so to be safe playing CoD you need to both revert to OFW (or DB) and do a factory reset (i.e., wipe the HDD).
There are very few games that do this, btw, I think CoD is the only one worth mentioning these days (GTA V also did this but iirc the PS3 online service has been discontinued so it's no longer an issue).
There are so-called anti-ban eboots, basically modded game executables with the CFW check removed, but AFAIK only the one for BO2 is available publicly.
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Hi, so I was thinking of going ahead and installing CFW with bgtoolset, and to be extra safe I was going to delete my PSN account on that machine. I've been reading online that you can still play games you downloaded from PSN, but to re-download them you need to use the account you purchased them from. Should I just keep the account, but never use it, and create a new account? Or for security just delete it. (I still have a PSN account on another machine- a ps4, that I suppose I could use in recovery worst-case scenario).
 
pianohombre said:
Hi, so I was thinking of going ahead and installing CFW with bgtoolset, and to be extra safe I was going to delete my PSN account on that machine. I've been reading online that you can still play games you downloaded from PSN, but to re-download them you need to use the account you purchased them from. Should I just keep the account, but never use it, and create a new account? Or for security just delete it. (I still have a PSN account on another machine- a ps4, that I suppose I could use in recovery worst-case scenario).
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If you only use the PSN account for buying and downloading games from the PS3 store then the risk is minimal, just remember to turn off syscalls. We know that it's not possible for the PS3 store to detect modded consoles because I don't recall any case of anyone having banned using it. It's theoretically possible that Sony will add such detection capabilities in a future update but at this point in the PS3 lifecycle it's very unlikely.
If you actually want to play games online on PSN, better create a throwaway account.
 
@NiQ,
I've disabled auto-login for PSN and created a new user. Plan on creating a throwaway account just to play COD:BO1, then use WebMan Mod or something, like most people suggest. Not a priority but that was pretty much the only game I still played up until a year ago since most games cut their servers and it looks like Sony servers are limited also. Do you think it's safe to play Black Ops 3 if you aren't using any cheats?
 
pianohombre said:
@NiQ,
I've disabled auto-login for PSN and created a new user. Plan on creating a throwaway account just to play COD:BO1, then use WebMan Mod or something, like most people suggest. Not a priority but that was pretty much the only game I still played up until a year ago since most games cut their servers and it looks like Sony servers are limited also. Do you think it's safe to play Black Ops 3 if you aren't using any cheats?
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Nope. CoD BO2 and everything later in the series (including BO3) and Destiny (and GTA V but its online service for the PS3 is long gone) are the only games you must never ever play online on a modded console. These games have code that scans the console for popular homebrew and reports that to PSN, leading to a ban as soon as you choose the online option in the game menu.
There are so-called Antiban EBOOT files, i.e., game executables that have said check patched out, but (a) only BO2 has a working EBOOT available online, the rest are either only available in closed groups or never existed in the first place and (b) it's your call whether to risk your PS3 and account in case the EBOOT was not patched properly.
If you want to play CoD BO3 (or any of the other games I mentioned) you have to revert to OFW (maybe DB is also safe) and reformat the hard drive to get rid of leftover files, which might be detected as well. Or just get a 2nd PS3 and keep it unmodded for said games.
P.S. it's safe to play CoD in single player mode on modded systems, just make sure you're not logged in to PSN.
 
I tried following the video tuturial from MrMario, but now I'm in the unfortunate situation that the webbrowser on the ps3 suddenly reported that it could not read the page, while I was trying to patch the new firmware, around 31.27 in the video, or halfways through this tutorial. I followed all steps of the tutorial and everything went fine until this step. So now I'm unsure of how to get back on track? After the crash I tried reloading the flash writer page on the ps3, and now it can succesfully access the flash writer again...
What to do? Is it bricked? :S FYI I'm a noob in all this, so I'll need some guidance for dummies :)
 
@ps3noob, I'm not 100% sure because I haven't bricked a ps3, but I did brick a ps1 once after installing a modchip incorrectly. You wouldn't even be able to get this far with a bricked console. Do you know why it all failed before? Did you follow every step precisely? It could have been a power outage, failed thumb drive, etc. I believe the steps are backup original firmware, then patch, backup new firmware, restart, install PUP file and follow each direction carefully and make sure you know which model of PS3 you have also the CECH# on the back of your machine. Basically the thing is so user-friendly it practically holds your hand through each step you should be able to figure it out. You can start off where it failed before since it didn't finish patching the firmware. Also, you may want to include more info like are you trying to install HEN, CFW, did you use bug's ps3toolset, etc.
 
ps3noob1990 said:
I tried following the video tuturial from MrMario, but now I'm in the unfortunate situation that the webbrowser on the ps3 suddenly reported that it could not read the page, while I was trying to patch the new firmware, around 31.27 in the video, or halfways through this tutorial. I followed all steps of the tutorial and everything went fine until this step. So now I'm unsure of how to get back on track? After the crash I tried reloading the flash writer page on the ps3, and now it can succesfully access the flash writer again...
What to do? Is it bricked? :S FYI I'm a noob in all this, so I'll need some guidance for dummies :)
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Your PS3 isn't bricked. Bricked means that it doesn't work at all and won't even boot to XMB or even recovery mode.
Don't use Flash Writer. Use bgtoolset instead. Flash Writer is an old program that was ported over to 4.90 because bgtoolset (which is an online tool) was down for about 6 months. People were getting desperate and started using unofficial clones that did sometimes brick consoles and since there was no ETA on bgtoolset coming back there was a need for a stopgap. The only benefit of Flash Writer is that it's self-hosted so it can't go offline. Anyway now that bgtoolset is back, better use it since it's a lot easier.
 
RoboKing's Cosmos said:
Question: @bguerville how did you get the keys for 3.56 and above for the toolset? And it's minver 3.60 and under right?
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He doesn't have the keys. The toolset, as well as other tools for modding consoles on 3.56+ (e.g. flash writer) just use an exploit to run code, and using that they patch a specific routine used by the system update process so it doesn't validate the new keys before flashing it. That exploit is only used once, in order to have the system update flash the CFW. In addition, the PS3 bootloader validates the signature every time you turn on the console - however the bootloader itself is immutable, i.e. once the console leaves the factory not even Sony can change it without it resulting in a hard brick. That means that units manufactured before the keys were changed will forever have the old keys in the bootloader and will therefore always accept CFW as valid, assuming you can get it flashed (which is what the exploit is for). That's the reason why the older PS3s can be modded with CFW but the newer ones can't.

Also, in case you were wondering - the said exploit does work on super-slims and you can technically flash the CFW, but since the bootloader on those systems use the new key you'll just brick your console if you do that (and obviously bgtoolset has a safety check and won't allow you to flash those models with CFW).
 
RoboKing's Cosmos said:
Question: @bguerville how did you get the keys for 3.56 and above for the toolset? And it's minver 3.60 and under right?
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I didn't get any keys, when it comes to jailbreak, the Toolset ONLY does through software what hardware flashers had already been doing for years, if you cared to look closely at the Toolset patches, you would realise that they're basically the pyps3tools project patches meant for hardware flashers, they always worked on all consoles with minver <= 3.56.
 
bguerville said:
I didn't get any keys, when it comes to jailbreak, the Toolset ONLY does through software what hardware flashers had already been doing for years, if you cared to look closely at the Toolset patches, you would realise that they're basically the pyps3tools project patches meant for hardware flashers, they always worked on all consoles with minver <= 3.56.
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btw one thing I don't understand is how the console still boots after you patch it.
 
NiQ said:
He doesn't have the keys. The toolset, as well as other tools for modding consoles on 3.56+ (e.g. flash writer) just use an exploit to run code, and using that they patch a specific routine used by the system update process so it doesn't validate the new keys before flashing it. That exploit is only used once, in order to have the system update flash the CFW. In addition, the PS3 bootloader validates the signature every time you turn on the console - however the bootloader itself is immutable, i.e. once the console leaves the factory not even Sony can change it without it resulting in a hard brick. That means that units manufactured before the keys were changed will forever have the old keys in the bootloader and will therefore always accept CFW as valid, assuming you can get it flashed (which is what the exploit is for). That's the reason why the older PS3s can be modded with CFW but the newer ones can't.

Also, in case you were wondering - the said exploit does work on super-slims and you can technically flash the CFW, but since the bootloader on those systems use the new key you'll just brick your console if you do that (and obviously bgtoolset has a safety check and won't allow you to flash those models with CFW).
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Yep kinda figured as I have a cech2001a still alive today under my usage (surprisingly it still works) I keep it as a souvenir for CFW till keys come out for superslim
 
RoboKing's Cosmos said:
Yep kinda figured as I have a cech2001a still alive today under my usage (surprisingly it still works) I keep it as a souvenir for CFW till keys come out for superslim
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Unless they somehow leak then that'll never happen. Using current-day technology breaking the new keys would take longer than the age of the universe. The old keys were cracked because the random number generator that Sony used to generate them was anything but random and the keys were weak as a result. Obviously, Sony did not repeat that mistake again.
Also, if it ever becomes possible to crack ECDSA most chances people would aim for newer iterations of the PlayStation since it has more practical uses, e.g., as of the time of writing this you can't play PS4 / PS5 games that require firmware newer than 9.00 / 4.51 respectively (assuming they actually use new syscalls), while this is a non-issue on the PS3 since any version can be modded.
 
bguerville said:
I didn't get any keys, when it comes to jailbreak, the Toolset ONLY does through software what hardware flashers had already been doing for years, if you cared to look closely at the Toolset patches, you would realise that they're basically the pyps3tools project patches meant for hardware flashers, they always worked on all consoles with minver <= 3.56.
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Well.. I already know it's the same Evilnat noFSM patch. Just curious is all... I assumed you've managed to put in some coding for that but I think I was wrong
 
NiQ said:
btw one thing I don't understand is how the console still boots after you patch it.
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It simply boots into the patched CoreOS, why wouldn't it? All modified CoreOS executables are resigned as they should be with accepted keys, there's no particular obstacle that would prevent a boot, same as if you had used a hardware flasher to rewrite CoreOS.
 
Thibobo said:
Thanks!

And yes you are partially right, for a NOR console it's great to have the 16Mb backup, if something goes wrong you can flash that back with a HW flasher. But for NAND consoles it's a bit more complicated, via software it's only possible to dump 239Mb of the 256Mb flash, it misses a hidden section which contains the lv0ldr bootloader.
Hence having only the 239Mb backup of the NAND dumped via this tool is as good as useless unless you have a full 256 Mb dump taken with a HW flasher or dumped via CFW with a tool like rebug toolbox, with that you could reconstruct the 239Mb dump to a full 256Mb one.
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Can you please help bro and here my whatsappp number +27715813551
 
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