Console Hacking 2015: Penguins on Aeolia Today Fail0verflow demonstrated to the world that they could run a Linux operating system on a PS4. This is a great achievement and no easy task, but its left a lot of people wondering how they managed to do it and what happens next? How Fail0verflow hacked the PS4: Fail0verflow hacked the PS4 using WebKit Entry point exploits. Cturt documented how to get the PS4 browser to free up processes on the console's operating system by using WebKit exploit. The PS4 is powered by Sony's Orbis operating system which is based on a Unix-like software called FreeBSD, in fact the PS4's kernel is so similar to the stock FreeBSD 9.0 kernel that it is open to all the same well documented vulnerabilities such as CVE-2013-2171 I would imagine which "does not properly determine whether a task should have write access to a memory location, which allows local users to bypass filesystem write permissions and consequently gain privileges" Using a WebKit exploit allowed Fail0verflow access to the consoles file system. From here the team found a weakness in the PlayStation 4's GPU. The hackers said that the Engineers from Marvell were "smoking some real good stuff" when they built the PlayStation 4's southbridge chip and also stated that the engineers reinvented the PCI their own way. Fail0verflow went http://www.xpgamesaves.com/index.php?app=forums&module=post§ion=post&do=new_post&f=503onto show their proof of concept by installing Linux operating system on a PS4 console, and then playing Pokemon on it. This hack was performed on a PS4 running firmware version 1.76 which we all know is an old version. The latest firmware I believe is 3.11 which means the exploit is already patched, that doesn't however mean we wont see newer firmware exploited. Fail0verflow claim that they have working Kernal patches and are working on a custom bootstrap. You can read more about hacking the PS4 on Cturt's github here. There is a lot of info there to fry your mind with! You can watch fail0verflows proof of concept video here. Credits: @Fail0verflow Also: Cturt flatz SKFU droogie Xerpi bigboss Hunger Takezo Proxima
