One of the biggest gripes in the PlayStation 4 scene is that the newest hacked firmware (5.05/5.07) is more than 2 years old. This makes finding a hackable PS4 quite difficult and you’ll not be able to play games released after January 2018 bar a few backports using debug executables. Now, the situation in the PlayStation 4 scene seems to be changing because TheFlow has just announced to stay on FW 6.20 or lower as a kxploit is coming!

Isn’t there already a public exploit for FW 6.20? Why is a kernel exploit important?

While it is true that there are public exploits for FW 6.20, these are WebKit exploits meaning that they only exploit the user-land.

As a result, these exploits of which there are at least two, one by SpecterDev and one by Fire30 are not powerful enough to create a full jailbreak similar to that found on FW 5.05 or below since such jailbreaks require a kernel exploit (kxploit). From a user point of view, WebKit exploits won’t deliver much except a ray of hope since they do provide an entry point from which a kernel exploit can be chained later on.

Unfortunately, public kernel exploits are far and few between for a magnitude of reasons with one being that they allow for piracy in a console that’s still considered as current for which numerous games are still being released.

TheFlow advises not to update past FW 6.20

Moving on to actual news bit, TheFlow has announced that he’s working on a kernel exploit (kxploit) for PlayStation 4 Firmware 6.20 and that you shouldn’t update past it meaning that a public release is to be expected further down the line.

TheFlow is a name synonymous with the PlayStation Vita hacking scene as he did various contributions to that scene including h-encore and h-encore2 which hack PSVita FW 3.65+, Adrenaline and VitaShell among many others including a recently released save state plugin.

As a result, it could be said that TheFlow is known to deliver meaning that it may not be too long before the PlayStation 4 gets hacked up to and including Firmware 6.20. Furthermore, TheFlow managed to get his hands on a FW 6.20 PlayStation 4 meaning that development/testing efforts will probably see a boost soon.

Conclusion

Finally, it’s important to state that TheFlow has given no ETA so it’s futile to ask him on Twitter or elsewhere when he’ll be releasing his work as you’ll only be risking a ban from his social media accounts. You may donate to TheFlow via the Patreon link below on which he sometimes shares status updates/releases before releasing them publicly.

TheFlow’s Twitter (further updates): https://twitter.com/theflow0

TheFlow’s Patreon (donating): https://www.patreon.com/TheOfficialFloW