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

So not really broken

[OverlordQ]

Broken in the sense that as long as you want to only play current games and never connect to the internet again, sure.

Re:So not really broken

[sd4f]

Considering that online multiplayer requires a paid subscription, there may be actually more incentive for people to use it this time around, as opposed to the PS3.

Re:So not really broken

[Locke2005]

Broken in the sense that this might be useful for people wanting to experiment with writing their own software for the PS4 without paying Sony a fortune, but that's a pretty small target audience. Eventually it will be useful for supporting games the original developer has abandoned.

Re:So not really broken

[FauxReal]

Online play was free for PS3 and paid for Xbox 360. This generation Sony decided to start charging too. They know that people are willing to pay for DLC subscriptions and microtransactions for mobile games while MS has been charging. So Sony is confident that they have people hooked too. The name of the game over the last decade has been to turn everything possible into a service model (I'm looking at you Office 360 and Adobe Creative Cloud). I'm really curious as to how far this can go, everyone can't pay a monthly fee for everything. And with technology ramping up to the point where a lot of our jobs will become automated and people-free... something's gotta give.

Re:So not really broken

[Darinbob]

A million years ago (more like a little over a decade) I had a friend who worked for a gaming company. He was hoping that the XBox, which was just coming out, was going to become popular. I expressed some surprise since Microsoft wasn't widely respected in other fields. His explanation was that Sony was sucking too much money from the development houses, the Playstation tax that every game must pay, and Microsoft was being much more lenient. But then fast forward and we see that Microsoft was deliberately selling below cost to get a market share, then added their subscriptions, then got into and out of hot water about plans for xbox one, console exclusives, etc. Maybe game devs got some more margins from xbox but in the end the customers of consoles have a choice between two or three evils (or more with pc).

Re:So not really broken

[mattack2]

I haven't gotten a subscription, but you *do* get free full games (that work as long as your subscription lasts) every month. Usually one or more of the highest caliber games. (So yes, you might already own them.)

Sony has been doing it for several years, and even though Microsoft had the more "required" subscription (even to use things like Netflix until the past year or two), MS only started the free game thing in earnest within the past year, IIRC.

Re:So not really broken

[Jethro]

> Online play was free for PS3 and paid for Xbox 360. This generation Sony decided to start charging too.

And that's the point where the advantages of PC gaming outweighed the disadvantages for me. Up until that, I was willing to put up with consoles, but that was the last straw.

Re:So not really broken

[drinkypoo]

Why would you want to? It's almost a PC. There's not a single interesting part in there. Why not just hack on the real thing?

Because one day there will be super shitloads of them at yard sales and flea markets and if they don't have hack value then the next stop is landfill.

cracked in about two years.

[Gravis Zero]

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.

Re:cracked in about two years.

[Dorianny]

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.

Re:cracked in about two years.

[Darinbob]

The console makers like to sell them below cost at times because they get a nice kickback from sales of the games. There's a naivete with the console makers in that they don't expect anyone else to use the boxes for other purposes, and naivete in thinking that they can stamp it out or that it's hurting their profits if they don't.

Re:cracked in about two years.

[PRMan]

It was only about 2-3 months later...

Re:cracked in about two years.

[tlhIngan]

OtherOS on PS4 would be nothing more than a novelty.

You have to think a bit more thoroughly.

First, a console that could somehow run homebrew means homebrewers will likely use that mechanism to run homebrew. Like OtherOS, or XNA. This keeps a highly technical crowd busy and happy. This leaves pirates to work by themselves trying to figure out how to pirate games.

But take away that ability, and suddenly the homebrewers and pirates goals have aligned - homebrewers want to write code and pirates want to run code.

So when Sony took away OtherOS, the homebrewers were suddenly looking at how to get it back. And that's when they discovered the fatal flaws of the Sony OS. Pirates rejoiced because homebrewers, who are some of the most technically skilled people around, were doing all the hard work and found the critical bugs - now not only could homebrewers write their own code, but pirates had full access too.

Microsoft learned this the hard way with the original Xbox - homebrewers found critical flaws in the system and broke it open. The homebrewers even kindly asked Microsoft for an "official" way to homebrew after they found the bug - revealing they found a critical system flaw. Microsoft didn't give way, and the homebrewers released their code, resulting in the complete breaking of the original Xbox.

I'm sure the homebrewers did the same for Sony, but Sony refused to allow OtherOS and they released their code. At which point other hackers discovered the keys were easily obtainable and got the official master keys.

In the meantime, Microsoft created an official way to homebrew called XNA, charged a little money for it, and the Xbox360 was never completely cracked - there were optical drive exploits (for pirating games, but those were detectable by the OS), and odd versions of software could run Linux, but that's about it.

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.

Re:cracked in about two years.

[dbIII]

PS3 clusters made economic sense if you were in the market for a cheap distributed computing platform

Sadly only if you didn't need much memory for what you wanted to do, but it seemed like the only way to get to use the Cell for under $10k.
I tried to get a very low end Cell machine around that time - about three weeks of the very slimy vendor carefully weighing my companies wallet and strongly hinting at kickbacks finally resulted in a quote that was about the same as buying three similar x86_64 machines. Very few vendors offered it and they had drawn up a map of who could sell to where so the other vendors just referred me back to the slimy guy that kept me waiting. It turns out they mostly sold to the military and had very few commercial sales.

Sony's problem is obvious:

[Locke2005]

They should have based their OS on nice, secure Windows instead of that poorly-designed FreeBSD crap!

I'm being humorous, but it is good to be occasionally reminded that all software has vulnerabilities.

Legal?

[rtkluttz]

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.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Steam Box?

[DMJC]

So does anyone want to try installing SteamOS or Debian/Steam on one of these?

This is a pointless endeavor.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

FreeBSD

[jones_supa]

It's kind of funny to think how big gaming platform FreeBSD actually is.

I'm baffled why customers pay me a subscription

[raymorris]

I used to sell some specialized professional software for $150, flat fee it yours forever. The competition charged $35 per month. A LOT of customers preferred the $35/month option, even after I pointed out that's $420/year. They all use the software for several years, not for a month or two.

After a couple of years of customer requests , I added a $25/month option to our order form, and pointed out that $150 flat was a better value - buy 6 months, get forever free. A lot of people still chose $25/month.

The current version is now $269 flat or $59/month. Just the other day I spoke to a customer who has had two installations and wants another. I pointed out so far he's paid for 36 months x $59. = $2,124 each, when he could have paid $269; for the next one he should just pay $269 and save $2,000. He didn't want to! He wants to pay $59 every month for the new installation as well. Wtf?

Often in this situation, when I notice it, I just tell the customer to stop paying. It's silly as heck to keep paying every month, but that's what many customers want.

Re:I'm baffled why customers pay me a subscription

[Darinbob]

But compare to paying $0 a month for PC games, version $>0 on consoles.

Though there are definitely demographic differences between the two camps. Huge demographic differences even on PC between I-love-DRM players and older players. There is one camp of players that only want new games and nothing else. If the game is a month old and their friends don't play it then they don't want it.

But I'm just suprised that the first day that Sony said "there's a monthly fee if you want to do things that other platforms do for free" that no one said "what the hell?!" And when single player games that are paid for and downloaded can't be played without a monthly fee and there's no rioting in the streets?