Hackers come one step closer to jailbreaking PlayStation 5 - what does it mean and how are they doing it?
It might not be a fully-fledged reality yet, but hackers think they are close to jailbreaking the PlayStation 5.
Since the PS5 was first released in November 2020, hackers have been trying to figure out the secret’s behind Sony’s hardware - thus far, to no avail.
Their plan is to “jailbreak” to console once they have cracked the system, which means the software on the PlayStation is bypassed. This allows users to install their own software onto the console, which leads to custom firmware, emulation of games and overall control of the operating system.
Players do this to play old titles on the system, mod games they already have installed and put custom themes or applications onto the device. It’s highly frowned upon by Sony, and consoles that have been jailbroken can be banned from online services.
Jailbreaking has been done on countless consoles before; the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were notoriously easy to jailbreak, as was the first batch of Nintendo Switch consoles.
The PS5, however, has been the hacking community’s white whale. Until now.
A recent development has allegedly led to the PS5 ROM keys being leaked. These are the hex strings for the hardware coding, which means the community is analysing and decrypting the console’s bootloader as this article is being written.
This is a problem for Sony, as these keys cannot be patched or changed - the code is burned directly into the console. The only workaround would be to change the chips in PS5s that are still being manufactured.
While we won’t see jailbroken PS5s on the second-hand market just yet, it seems to be only a matter of time before they start cropping up.