The Other PS3 Hacker Is (Probably) Headed to Jail

German PS3 hacker Alexander “Graf Chokolo” Egorenkov may be on his way to the ol’ hoosegow after being unable to pay his legal fees.

Though Sony’s most high-profile PS3 hacking case was the legal battle against George “GeoHot” Hotz, he wasn’t the hardware giant’s only target. Sony also targeted hacking group fail0verflow, in particular setting its sights on German hacker Alexander “graf_chokolo.”

Egorenkov, like Hotz, was accused of disseminating the keys to the PS3’s hardware which enabled users to “jailbreak” their consoles. While proponents of jailbreaking argued that it would allow them to run homebrew software and restore the “OtherOS” functionality on their legally purchased device, Sony and other opponents maintained that the true purpose was illegal software piracy.

Last week, Egorenkov wrote on his blog that he was probably headed for jail time after being unable to pay his legal fees. Still, he remained defiant: “But I’m ready to stand up for everything I said and go to jail for that too. It’s not important to win, more important is to show them that we are ready to fight, that they cannot scare me off easily. Yeah, I’m ready to go to jail for my believes [sic] and my principles.”

Between that most-recent note and an equally defiant rant from several months ago in which Egorenkov said that Sony would have to “just kill [him]” to get him to stop his actions, it seems unlikely that he would be willing to settle a case on Sony’s terms as did GeoHot.

Speaking of GeoHot, what happened to all that money he donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation? It strikes me that there’s another hacker out there who could use all of it now that he’s not using it.

(Via DailyTech)

Thanks to Scanniza for the tip!