There has been a huge breakthrough for the console hacking community. Two exploits have been found, allowing hackers to fully decrypt PS5 firmware which could possibly lead to jailbreaking the console in the future.
Hacking group fail0verflow posted a screenshot of a decrypted PS5 firmware update, explaining that they got both encryption and decryption root keys for the console. They also mentioned that the keys could be acquired with software alone, meaning no hardware hacking was required.
Around the same time, Andy Nguyen (theflow0), a security engineer at Google, found another exploit. He got into the debug settings menu on the PS5 and posted a screenshot of it on his Twitter page. In a reply to his tweet, Nguyen said “No plans for disclosure. No ETA.”, meaning he does not plan to do anything with the exploit.
What do these exploits mean?
These exploits have been done with older consoles like the PS3 by fail0verflow themselves, which ultimately led to the ability to jailbreak the console. This means anyone could install custom firmware and get free games onto the PS3.
In the past, fail0verflow has waited for Sony to push a firmware update before releasing any further information about the exploits. It is very possible that they will do the same this time around, so we might have to wait a long time before we find out more.
It is quite unclear whether this would lead to a PS5 jailbreak in the future. Back in 2013, the fail0verflow group stated their opinions on jailbreaks or ‘homebrews’ in the modern era. In a blog post by Wololo, they said that hacking older consoles used to be worth it because they were relatively affordable, but newer console are “glorified PCs” and hackers simply do not have the interest in making jailbreaks for them.
The hacking group could also just be avoiding legal action, as Sony sued them back in 2011 and made them agree to never hack Sony products again.
[ SOURCE, IMAGE SOURCE ]
