Modder Finally Cracks PS2's MechaCon Security Chip After Four Years of Reverse Engineering
The PlayStation 2's last big hardware secret has finally been cracked open after 26 years.
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| Factor | Weight | Score | Contribution | Where it came from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corroboration | 0.35 | 0.39 | +0.135 36% | 1 independent org on the story. Tier-3 aggregators never corroborate — they can show something is circulating, never that it is true. |
| Source trustleads | 0.25 | 0.80 | +0.200 53% | TechPowerUp is the highest-trust source on this story. Trust is taken from the best source, not averaged. |
| Pickup rate | 0.20 | 0.00 | +0.000 0% | One counted organisation, so there is no spread to measure — nothing has picked this up to set a rate. |
| Freshness | 0.20 | 0.21 | +0.042 11% | Halves every 10 hours from the newest item on the story. This is the only factor that rewards a story for nothing more than being recent. |
Corroboration counts distinct organisations, once each, and only from tiers 1 and 2. Freshness halves every 10 hours, so this ranking is a snapshot and will differ at the next build.
What happened
The PlayStation 2's last big hardware secret has finally been cracked open after 26 years. Canadian retro hardware enthusiast DiscoStarslayer has successfully reverse-engineered the CXP102064 MechaCon chip, the security chip inside the original PS2 that governs the console's optical drive and its anti-piracy protections. It took four years of chemical decapping, optical dumping, and reading silicon circuitry under a microscope before an exploit turned up that finally let the chip's data be pulled out through software. DiscoStarslayer shared the milestone on X, crediting a collaborator named Libby with finding the actual exploit that unlocked the chip's contents.
How this story arrived
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- 01 Techpowerup first seen Modder Finally Cracks PS2's MechaCon Security Chip After Four Years of Reverse Engineering
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