In parallel to the widely media-covered “Linux on PS4” by Fail0verflow, the PS4 scene is still progressing at a steady pace on the native side of hacks. People running on firmware 1.76 have access to the webkit exploit and can use these tools to tinker with their PS4.

Developer hitodama released a binary loader named elfldr. You can think of it as a first step to a Homebrew Loader running within the exploited webkit process.

Additionally, hitodama maintains other tools in his ps4dev github directory. Please note that we haven’t tested any of the tools mentioned below.

elfldr – Runs 64-bit Elf files in-process on Linux, FreeBSD and the PS4.

libps4 – Libc, POSIX and SCE module library for the PS4

libps4-generator – Generates libps4 through std (C and Posix) and SCE module headers

libps4-symbols – Most recent PS4 symbols by firmware for analysis and convenience

libps4-examples – Examples and proof of concept samples which show stuff done with libps4 (not necessarily unique to the PS4 – in fact proof of POSIX parts or failures are quite welcome)

libps4-boilerplate – Imported by libps4-generator to generate libps4

libps4-sce-include – Reverse engineered community maintained SCE headers. Imported by libps4-generator to generate libps4

libps4-std-include – Read-only freebsd libc and POSIX headers. Imported by libps4-generator to generate libps4

Hitodama credits the following people for their work on the PS4: CTurt, flatz, SKFU, droogie, Xerpi, Hunger, Takezo, nas, Proxima.

It is worth mentioning that this work has nothing to do with the Fail0verflow linux on PS4 work. As a matter of fact, it goes in a very opposite direction, trying to provide native tools on top of the PS4 System Firmware (think CFW, Homebrew loaders, plugins in the long term) rather than installing and running an alternate OS. Exactly the kind of thing that Fail0verflow stated they wouldn’t like to see happen, due to fear that piracy could tank the homebrew scene.

But, as PsxDev stated, sometimes, “native execution is more fun”

Linux in ps4 is fun, but native code execution on playstation devices was, is and will be more fun for me. — bigboss (@psxdev) January 2, 2016

You can see details on the PS4 Hacks progress on our PS4 Jailbreak page.

What are your thoughts? Are you thrilled to see some progress on native exploits on the PS4, or would you rather see more people pour efforts into the Linux port?

Update: in an earlier version of this article we mistakenly stated that these tools were released and maintained by @psxdev. This has been corrected, apologies for the mix-up.

source @psxdev, via psx-place