Hackers may have just made some big strides towards possibly jailbreaking the PlayStation 5 over the weekend, with the hacking group Fail0verflow claiming to have managed to obtain PS5 root keys allowing them to decrypt the console’s firmware.
Additionally, Andy Nguyen (a security engineer at Google who’s better known under his handle, theflow0) managed to access the PS5’s debug settings menu on a retail PS5 over the weekend, too. Both exploits were spotted by Wololo.net.
The two exploits are particularly notable due to the level of access they theoretically give to the PS5’s software. Decrypted firmware — which is possible through Fail0verflow’s keys — would potentially allow for hackers to further reverse engineer the PS5 software and potentially develop the sorts of hacks that allowed for things like installing Linux, emulators, or even pirated games on past Sony consoles.
Obviously, Sony is presumably keen to prevent users from doing those sorts of things and will presumably be doing whatever it can to prevent those exploits from reaching a broader audience, in addition to attempting to patch the vulnerabilities there.
For now, the two exploits won’t result in much of a change for PS5 owners — there’s no sudden PS5 jailbreak available today, and neither Nguyen nor Fail0verflow have published the details of their respective hacks — nor is it even clear if they ever will. Nguyen has already said that he has “no plans for disclosure” of his hack, while Wololo.net notes that Fail0verflow held off on publishing its PS4 hacks last console generation until Sony patched things, meaning that it’s possible none of this will lead to concrete changes in the PS5 hacking scene.