'Valid target'

'Valid target'

The PS3 - once regarded as the most secure of the game's consoles, and the only one not to have been permanently cracked - has in the last 12 months come under increasingly scrutiny from hackers.

Following his initial announcement, Sony released an update disabling a function, called OtherOS, that allowed gamers to install a version of Linux on their machines, thought to have been exploited by Mr Hotz.In January 2010, Mr Hotz claimed to have cracked the console.

Many saw it as a pre-emptive strike to guard against games piracy.

Mr Hotz never released the exploit and publicly said that he had stopped work on the console.

But Sony's removal of OtherOS prompted other hackers to begin to look at the system more closely.

"It became a valid target," Pytey told BBC News. "That was the motivation for us to hack it."

He said the team had spent "months" trying to find their way into the system.