The PS5 has been jailbroken to allow pirated games for the first time

metro.co.uk:

It might not work for long, but someone has managed to crack the security on the PlayStation 5, allowing it install homebrew software.

It happens to every console eventually, but as the PlayStation 5 approaches its second anniversary, reports claim that it has been ‘jailbroken’. That means hackers have been able to break into the console’s inner workings in order to run custom software, including pirated games.

With online being so instrumental to most modern games, piracy is no longer the concern it once was for publishers, as it’s all but impossible to run pirated versions of multiplayer titles, but Sony will still be upset at the idea of hackers being able to run their own software on the console.

Videos of the jailbreak show an unnamed hacker gaining access to the console’s internal debug menu and installing an, essentially pirated, copy of the delisted P.T. demo for Silent Hills.

The jailbreak currently only works with firmware 4.03, from way back in October 2021, so it’s not going to be something many ordinary fans can do, although apparently there is a good chance the same exploit can be made to work with earlier updates.

At the moment though the trick only works 30% of the time and only gives read/write access, so you can install whatever software you want but don’t have execute access to actually run it.

The exploit was highlighted by well known hacker Lance McDonald, but he is not responsible for it and that’s not him in the video below.

Although it only has limited functionality the discovery is likely to make it easier for hackers to work out other, more practical, ways to jailbreak the console, which is certain to cause headaches for Sony down the road.

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