Quick summary? The PS3 is currently on Wii levels of "hacked" - the latest happenings gave hackers access to the deepest of deep levels of the system. Outside of PSN, which still can detect whether you are playing backups or not, anything can be done on the PS3 at this point.

http://wololo.net/2012/11/11/ps3-4-31-isoldr-lv2ldr-keys-released-install-cfw-on-almost-any-ps3/
http://wololo.net/2012/10/24/ps3-blown-open-scene-chaos-lv0-keys-leaked-and-working/

This means that hackers have lv0 access with no way for Sony to ever patch it - just about any PS3 can be flashed to a CFW these days (unless there are hardware differences which are being actively researched, but it's only a matter of time until those too are hackable, similarily to what happened in the PSP scene).

We're also on the final stretch before a PS3 ODDE is released. Although that's a hardware mod, it removes the need of loading backups from a CFW level, and thus removes the possibility of being banned on PSN.
http://gbatemp.net/threads/ps3-odde-news.336081/

E3Flasher now also offers Dual Boot, which means that you can have one partition with an OFW and one with a CFW, further securing yourself.
http://www.e3-tech.net/e3%20flasher.html

All in all... The PS3's doors are wide open, and they can't get open any wider.

This post has been edited by Foxi4, Wed, December 19th, 2012 at 10:59