Slashdot Mirror
Hackers Get Linux Running On a PlayStation 4 (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Two years after the PlayStation 4 was released, and two weeks after it was jailbroken, a group of hackers has now successfully installed Linux on it. "...it appears that the fail0verflow team utilized a WebKit bug similar to the one recently documented by GitHub user CTurt and then took things up a notch. CTurt's workaround focuses on the PlayStation 4's Webkit browser, which is tricked into freeing processes from the core of the console's operating system by an improvised webpage. The PS4 is powered by Sony's Orbis OS, which is based on a Unix-like software called FreeBSD. With a route into the console's system, fail0verflow then identified weaknesses in the PlayStation 4's GPU. It specifically called out engineers from semiconductor company Marvell, accusing them of 'smoking some real good stuff' when they designed the PlayStation 4's southbridge chip."
The accomplishment is the jailbreak.
Getting Linux to run on something already running FreeBSD is like saying you managed to replace Redhat with Centos on a machine... wow, what a tough task...
I'll go back to configuring Postfix on my new "Unix-like" FreeBSD server so I can ship it out to the data center on Monday...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.