Despite Sony’s efforts to keep the PlayStation 3 system secure (and it seems until now that has been the case), after more than 3-years after the PS3 launch, hacker George Hotz has posted a blog post claiming he has been able to hack the PlayStation 3 system allowing him to have full read and write access to the system and the processor.

If the hack proves to work, users can potentially use homebrewed apps, similar to the Homebrew channel on Nintendo’s Wii system, and play backed up games.

Hackers were previously able to decrypt the PlayStation Home service, giving users complete access to the system files. The hackers said there were more 9,000 files available in the 0.86 beta client. The idea is to analyze the files to better understand the network structure, and potentially to use the in-game XMB to launch copied games.

George Hotz says his method is not patchable just yet, meaning there is no software patch yet available for users to apply the patch and crack their own PlayStation system.

There is currently no plans for the hacker to release any crack to the public. If a patch is made available to the public, we can expect Sony to immediately issue a fix via a firmware update, and as we know, that tends to be a never ending battle.

This appears to be the first real attempt at cracking the PlayStation 3, which has, even until now, remained secure.

Both of the two other major gaming consoles, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii gaming system have already been compromised after their respective releases, allowing users to create and play backed up versions of games.