While the majority of news surrounding jailbreaks is related to iOS and other Apple products due to the incredibly restrictive ecosystem, there a number of jailbreaks for other devices as well that allow users to further the functionality of their favorite devices. A recent PS4 5.05 Jailbreak Exploit has already been discovered, allowing enterprising hackers into the internal workings of the system.
The PS4 5.05 jailbreak exploit is a webkit exploit that came soon after a full jailbreak was discovered for all PS4s running the 4.55 firmware update – immediately bringing attention to the potential of the PS4 jailbreaking scene. It had been quite some time since a hack of this size was discovered, and the PS4 5.05 jailbreak exploit takes advantage of a new usermode exploit that gives users the opportunity to put together a full exploit for the 5.05 firmware update.
Perhaps most notable is this PS4 5.05 jailbreak exploit is the same vulnerability that was used by Team Reswitched in order to further unlock the Nintendo Switch hardware and open it up to a homebrew environment. Because of the way in which the exploit was discovered and publicized, it’s quite likely that the team’s efforts to unlock the Switch were the main motivator for the other group in this PS4 5.05 jailbreak exploit development.
It’s important to keep in mind that the PS4 5.05 jailbreak exploit is not necessarily the development of a full jailbreak in and of itself, rather giving us a tool that will eventually lead to one should development and discovery continue. Essentially, in order to fully unlock the PlayStation, a kernel-level vulnerability will need to be discovered that can give privilege escalation. This escalation combined with the existing PS4 5.05 jailbreak exploit should give developers the tools they need to fully unlock Sony’s latest firmware update.
The information regarding the specifics of this PS4 5.05 jailbreak exploit is available on a CVE-2017-7005 proof-of-concept project on Github, although it’s fairly technical and will likely be lost on those who aren’t familiar with programming in one way or another.
Essentially, it’s difficult to tell whether this will ever turn into something that gives us a full jailbreak. However, the PS4 5.05 jailbreak exploit is one of the major building blocks we need. The fact that we received a crack so soon after the firmware was released to the public means that the PS4 jailbreaking community is making great strides towards staying current alongside releases. This is in stark contrast to the iOS community that is generally at least a few updates behind. The reasoning behind that is due to Apple’s strong security rather than a less passionate jailbreaking community, but it’s still a substantial achievement that the PlayStation community has managed to arrive at this exploit so soon.
In the coming weeks, it’s quite likely that we’ll see a full PS4 jailbreak. Until then, we’ll have to be content with the knowledge that the capability is out there – it’s just a matter of discovering it and putting it into action as quickly and efficiently as possible.
