You know what I’m talking about: the infamous “OtherOS” hack that allowed you to run Linux on your PS3 and play all sorts of games without paying for them. Well, it turns out that Sony accidentally left their ECDSA private key in plain text on a development server, which means anyone with access could have used it to sign malicious code as if it were from Sony themselves.

Now, you might be wondering why this is such a big deal. After all, signing your own code is pretty standard practice for software developers, right? Well, here’s the thing: when you sign your code with an ECDSA private key, anyone can verify that the signature was made by someone who has access to that private key. This means that if Sony accidentally left their private key lying around, then any malicious actor could have used it to create fake updates or patches for the PS3 and trick unsuspecting users into installing them.

Not only did Sony leave their ECDSA private key in plain text on a development server, but they also accidentally published it as part of an open-source project called “libhsl” (which stands for “High Speed Linux”). This means that anyone with access to the source code could have easily extracted the private key and used it for nefarious purposes.

Now, you might be thinking: “But wait, didn’t Sony fix this issue by releasing a patch?” And the answer is… sort of. They did release a patch, but unfortunately, that patch contained its own set of vulnerabilities (including one that allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code on your PS3). So basically, if you installed the “fix” for the ECDSA private key issue, then you ended up with an even bigger security hole than before.

But hey, at least Sony learned their lesson and started taking cybersecurity more seriously, right? Well… not exactly. In fact, just a few years later, they were hit by another massive data breach that exposed the personal information of millions of customers (including names, addresses, email addresses, and credit card numbers). And to make matters worse, it turned out that Sony had known about this vulnerability for months before it was exploited.

So what’s the takeaway here? Well, first and foremost: always double-check your code for security issues (especially if you’re working on a high-profile project like the PS3). And secondly: don’t leave your ECDSA private keys lying around in plain text.