Over the past two weeks we've been reporting on several 'PSJailbreak' devices which have started surfacing around the world. Now it seems Sony has addressed the issue with more than just litigation, with a new PlayStation 3 firmware upgrade apparently stopping the pirated devices dead in their tracks.

The USB jailbreak devices are able to bypass the PlayStation 3's copy protection and allows games to be installed and run from the hard drive.

Sony released a new software update yesterday, firmware version 3.42, that seems almost solely designed to battle the new jailbreak devices. A post on the PlayStation blog simply stated that the update includes "additional security features".

Exophase has confirmed that all variants of the jailbreak devices are no longer functioning after firmware 3.42 has been applied. This includes PSJailbreak, PSGroove and PSFreedom.

Sony has decided that updating to version 3.42 is mandatory for all users, meaning that those who stay on the previous version won't have access to the PlayStation Network, effectively kicking all the jailbreak users from the service.

Of course the designers of the jailbreak devices are now expected to release their own updates in turn circumventing Sony's firmware yet again, possibly signalling the start of a new PlayStation 3 patching race.