Developer Claims 'PS4 Officially Jailbroken' (networkworld.com)

colinneagle sends word that a developer has claimed to have achieved a jailbreak of the PlayStation 4. Networkworld reports: "If you have a PS4 and want to run homebrew content, then you might be happy to know developer CTurt claimed, "PS4 is now officially jailbroken." Over the weekend, CTurt took to Twitter to make the announcement. He did not use a jail vulnerability, he explained in a tweet. Instead, he used a FreeBSD kernel exploit.

Besides posting "an open source PlayStation 4 SDK" on GitHub, CTurt analyzed PS4's security twice and explained PS4 hacking. CTurt updated the open source PS4 SDK yesterday; he previously explained that Sony's proprietary Orbis OS is based on FREEBSD. In the past he released the PS4-playground, which included PS4 tools and experiments using the Webkit exploit for PS4 firmware version 1.76. To put that in context, Sony released version 3.0 in September. However, CTurt claimed the hack could be made to work on newer firmware versions.

Other PS4 hackers are reportedly also working on a kernel exploit, yet as Wololo pointed out, it is unlikely there might be more than proof-of-concept videos as the developers continue to tweak the exploit. Otherwise, Sony will do as it has in the past and release a new firmware version. In October 2014, developers nas and Proxima studied the PSVita Webkit exploit, applied it to the PS4, and then released the PS4 proof-of-concept. Shortly thereafter. Sony pushed out new firmware as a patch."

Comments

Re:cracked in about two years.

[wolrahnaes]

Except that wouldn't really be a great experience because AMD's drivers are still terrible on Linux.

Both of the current PC-like consoles use AMD GPUs derived from the GCN 1.0 family. The PS4's is roughly somewhere in between a Radeon HD 7850 and 7870, where the XB1's is harder to compare due to the memory configuration being rather unique (fast ESRAM cache but slow DDR3 main memory). It has less cores and a third the memory bandwidth but clocks higher.

Considering that even nVidia's optimization on Linux isn't as good as it is on Windows, most benchmarks I've seen show SteamOS delivering 50-80% of the framerate seen with the same hardware on Windows, you'd be giving up a LOT by trying to run SteamOS on a PS4 rather than just building a cheap gaming PC.

Since the flaw being exploited will likely be patched soon after it goes public, if not before, the better plan if one wanted to switch from PS4 to something else would be to hang on to your potentially exploitable console and keep it offline until someone releases an exploit. If Sony is able to fix the hole with a patch any unpatched boxes immediately jump up in value, like we saw with the Xbox 360 and PS3. That of course means giving up online features and possibly new game releases for a while, but if you're one of those users who doesn't game online and/or uses it mostly as a Bluray player that might not be a big deal. You can then use the money to build a budget gaming PC that'll beat the pants off of any of the consoles.