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

Posted by samzenpus on from the do-what-you-want dept.

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."

5 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. cracked in about two years. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I guess they should have let people use OtherOS like the PS3... until they didn't. Coincidentally, a couple years after OtherOS was disabled the PS3 was cracked.

    The lesson to be learned here: lock out Linux hackers and you're gonna get pwn3d.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:cracked in about two years. by Dorianny · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I guess they should have let people use OtherOS like the PS3... until they didn't. Coincidentally, a couple years after OtherOS was disabled the PS3 was cracked.

      The lesson to be learned here: lock out Linux hackers and you're gonna get pwn3d.

      The Cell based PS3 was seriously powerful hardware being sold at a very attractive price by Sony. PS3 clusters made economic sense if you were in the market for a cheap distributed computing platform. The x86 based PS4 was little more than a mid-range PC when released and was sold at break-even price by Sony. Now it would be considered obsolete hardware in the PC world. OtherOS on PS4 would be nothing more than a novelty.

  2. Legal? by rtkluttz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When is it going to finally be illegal for device creators to lock us out of our own shit? Hardware DOES NOT EQUAL software. Saying you want one does not automatically imply the other.

    --
    Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
    1. Re:Legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're confusing your own set of personal ethics with a managed system of laws. Neither are absolute, but one group is much, much bigger than the other.

  3. This is a pointless endeavor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    PS4 and XBoxOne are just AMD APU PCs in a nice box.What's the point?