If you’ve been keeping your PS4 on firmware 5.05 or lower, stop reading right now: SpecterDev announced a few hours ago that a PS4 5.05 Jailbreak release will happen in the next few weeks. But if you’re one of the poor souls who are stuck on firmware 5.50, 5.53, or above, you might want to keep reading.

Mathieulh, known for his contributions to the PSP and PS3 scenes, has recently been sharing a few bits and pieces of information on PS4 hacking. Earlier today, he shared on twitter something that indicates he was able to dump and decrypt firmware 5.53, hinting he likely has access to a 5.53 Kernel exploit.

As often, this information comes with little details, and in particular no word of a release. To the people who asked, Mathieulh replied that when you’re not happy about hackers keeping their exploits private for some time, the best (only?) thing you can do about it is to start learning about hacking yourself.

Granted, hacking a console is way more difficult today than it was 10 years ago.

In the twitter thread, the developer has commented on the upcoming 5.05 jailbreak release, stating there were good reasons it took some time (even if it is right around the corner now). A logical interpretation is that the hackers wanted the SDK to be ready. The same statement was made by Qwertyoruiop later today.

In the same tweet, he said “Keep in mind that a 4.55 exploit chain was published not long ago, so things do get shared”. As much as people get frustrated by the delay in releases, it’s important to understand that in order to find more exploits, hackers always have to keep at least one exploit private at a given time, so that they can reuse it to investigate further firmwares. There’s also a different level of implications for a hacker who would publish an exploit on the latest firmware (a zero day) versus an exploit for an older firmware. Even though legally a company like Sony could probably find good reasons to at least threaten a hacker in both cases, a public zero day hack (i.e., today, that would mean a hack on firmware 5.53) would damage their business way more than a hack released for an older firmware.

What’s in it for the End user?

What’s in this announcement for the scene is hope, pretty much. If you’re on 5.50 or 5.53, you now know that a kernel exploit exists for your firmware.

Source: Mathieulh